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Fifteen Months in Madison County
Between the summer of 1869 and the fall of 1870 — barely fifteen months — mobs in Madison County, Kentucky killed at least seven Black people. The county had a courthouse at Richmond, a college at Berea founded on the principle of racial equality, and, for that stretch, a Klan that rode more or…
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Stop Tapping the Storm Sewers: Lexington Has Been Fighting the Same Problem for 115 Years
A two-sentence notice in the spring of 1911 banned tapping Lexington’s storm sewers for sewage. The cross-connections it targeted are the same ones at the heart of the city’s $590 million EPA consent decree, entered almost to the day a century later.
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The Bard of the Turf, Revisited: Mickey Shannon’s Two-Issue Newspaper, His Trained Pig, and the Mule That Threw Him Into History
by Paul Oliva, Lexington Times Web Editor Editor’s note: In August 2023, this publication ran a remembrance of Michael Joseph “Mickey” Shannon, the Irish-born horseman who edited the original Lexington Sunday Times in 1911 — the colorful predecessor whose name we carry. Three more years of digging — through the digitized Lexington Herald and…
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Twenty-four hours of whiplash: a moratorium sprint, a $546 million budget, and a resignation that wasn’t
In 24 hours, Lexington’s council passed a $546 million budget and froze data-center development with surprise walk-on motions — the mayor’s endorsement arrived after the vote — while the school board and Superintendent Demetrus Liggins issued contradicting statements about whether he resigned. Commentary on what the speed says about civic process.
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The Great Writ comes to Covington: why immigration detainees are flooding Kentucky’s federal court with habeas petitions
Eastern Kentucky’s federal court logged zero immigration-detention habeas cases in 2024. It has seen 147 in the first five months of 2026 — nearly all from one Covington jail. Two 2025 legal changes explain the surge, and the constitutional stakes trace back to Abraham Lincoln.
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Days after Kentucky’s policy center urged cities to build opioid-money watchdogs, Lexington quietly abolished its own
On a silent 15-0 vote, the Urban County Council dissolved the citizen commission that vetted how Lexington spends ~$30 million in opioid-settlement money — six days after the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy urged counties to create exactly such bodies. The job now falls to a mayoral committee that answers to no ordinance, with…
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Lexington just made the Red Mile’s tax deal bigger. It’s worth half what the public’s been told — and what it’s actually paid out is sealed by law.
On a nine-day clock to beat a July 1 state deadline, the Urban County Council unanimously expanded a 16-year-old tax subsidy for the historic harness track — with no debate and no resident at the microphone. A look at what is really in the deal, and what the law keeps hidden.
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Lexington is about to vote on a modest set of reforms. One group is using them as a doorway to something much larger.
The Civic Assembly’s three charter changes head to a June 18 council vote with broad support. Behind them stands D.I.R.E.C.T., a group whose own literature argues the exercise should end in replacing elected council government — and whose answers, asked directly, are revealing.
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Commentary: I build with AI every day. In Lexington, it’s already doing more good than harm.
A council member called AI a far greater force for collective harm than good. After four years building free, open civic tools for Lexington with it, our founder makes the opposite case.
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Setting the Record Straight: The 2021 Alaska Landmine Article
In November 2021, the Alaska Landmine published a piece about me that left out the central fact: the Alaska Democratic Party had hired me, taken my work, and refused to pay. Five years later, here is the actual record.