Commentary

In January, in a meeting no reporter attended, Lexington’s pension board set the city’s contribution at 51.24 percent of police and fire payroll — about $52.5 million in the budget council just adopted. The fund is $386.6 million short, stuck near 72 percent funded for eight years, retirees are losing ground to inflation under…

Twenty-four years of Fayette County election results survived this morning in exactly one reachable place: the Internet Archive. The clerk’s site migration killed the archive, council video is legally destroyable 30 days after minutes are approved, and the plow data lives on because a citizen saved it. We recovered all 37 lost elections in…

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.

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.

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.

Follow the money in Lexington’s 2026 primary Our analysis of 2,080 campaign contributions shows three donor factions, an unannounced slate, and a mayor’s race that looks less like a blowout than the headline totals suggest. By The Lexington Times · April 22, 2026 · Data analysis Raquel Carter’s campaign reports $162,744 raised — more…

Commentary — the vice mayor finally showed some progressive grit at Tuesday’s opioid spending debate. The bar for what counts as grit says more about the last three years than it does about him. On April 21, 2026, at a routine council work session, something unusual happened. Vice Mayor Dan Wu picked a fight…

Lexingtonians have a beautiful way of processing our collective trauma. For the uninitiated: “anal beads” is what the internet has affectionately dubbed “A Common Thread” — the $900,000 mirror-polished sphere sculpture the city commissioned for Lexington’s 250th anniversary, now parked on the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza. The piece was funded out of 2023…

This is not advocacy. This is stigma dressed in scrubs. Let’s be honest about what happened Monday in the Council Chambers. More than 260 residents of one of Lexington’s wealthiest, most comfortable neighborhoods showed up to fight tooth and nail against a mental health facility moving in down the street. They brought attorneys. They…

A Lexington bank’s request to disqualify a Fayette Circuit judge has pulled back the curtain on a pattern of overlapping roles that has placed one man — and one law firm — at an unusual intersection of judicial, civic, and legal power in Lexington. James H. Frazier III is the CEO of McBrayer PLLC,…