Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (https://kycir.org/category/business/)
UK HealthCare has powerful debt collection tools at its disposal thanks to its partnership with the Department of Revenue, which can garnish wages, levy bank accounts or intercept tax returns to get at money allegedly owed to the university — all without a court order.
Louisville is looking for a new vendor to provide phone and video call services from the city jail. Unlike its previous contract with Securus Technologies, the city wants the new vendor to make calls free for incarcerated people and their loved ones.
People making calls from the Louisville jail currently pay Securus, a private company based in Texas. The company then passes a portion of that revenue on to Metro Government in commissions. But a request for proposals issued this week says the city will not only forgo commissions but will start paying for phone calls directly.
Records obtained by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting show Securus collected $1.6 million from the Louisville jail and paid nearly $945,000 in commissions last year.
Related story — Phone Calls Still Won’t Be Free When Louisville Jail Gives Up Profit. “It’s so important for families to be able to have contact with their loved ones who are inside the Louisville Department of Corrections, and it’s a really great step forward that it can be free,” said Judi Jennings, who provides art supplies to children visiting family members at the jail as part of the Louisville Family Justice Advocates.
The Federal Communications Commission capped rates on phone calls from prisons at .14 cents a minute in rules that became final in September.
entucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has revived and expanded a lawsuit accusing hedge fund managers and Kentucky Retirement System officials of mishandling the state’s troubled pension fund.
If granted, the lawmakers’ request would allow payday lenders offering annual interest rates as high as 469% to tap into forgivable loans with a 1% interest rate.
Mayor Greg Fischer’s executive order declaring a state of emergency granted him significant powers — including amending or selectively enforcing public sector union contracts.
While call centers have not been ordered to close in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said he would take further action if the employers didn’t find a way to comply with social distancing guidelines.
Bars and restaurants are closed. Schools are shuttered. Several major corporations, like Ford, have suspended operations. Others, like Humana, have allowed many employees to work from home. Even Kentucky’s sacred trifecta — church, basketball games and horse races — have all been canceled or postponed for the foreseeable future.
Kristin Hurst walked into the Kentucky lottery office in Lexington in May of last year expecting to claim a $1,000 prize from a scratch-off lottery ticket. Instead, the lottery employee told Hurst there was a red flag on her account. From the parking lot, she made a nervous call to her fiancé. It was his ticket she was trying to cash in, but something was wrong. She had to go to the main Kentucky lottery office to find out what.
Something went wrong with the Fireball ride at the 2018 Kentucky State Fair, and ride operator Duanne Haywood went underneath. Within minutes, Haywood was pinned. His was one of 19 worker injuries the ride company reported last year.
The University of Louisville Foundation has been slapped with a negative outlook by one of the nation’s major debt rating services.