Gov. Steve Beshear has been cozying up with big coal executives even more than usual in the last year.

A story this morning by Tom Loftus in The Courier-Journal revealed that Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy who was in charge when 29 miners were killed at the Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010, was was part of the governor’s Derby Day entourage this year.

Blankenship accompanied another Beshear guest, James Justice II, owner of the A&G coal company, that has a pending permit to strip mine in Harlan County and threaten the water source for the town of Lynch. They were on a list of people invited to Beshear’s Derby Eve Gala and accompanied the governor on a train that took the entourage from Frankfort to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby.

In previous stories, Loftus documented contributions from Justice and family members totaling $271,600 toward Beshear's re-election and inauguration. That breaks down as $50,000 to the Kentucky Democratic Party, $121,600 to the Democratic National Committee (most of which came back to the state party) and $100,000 to Beshear's inaugural committee.

The governor also has gotten a lot of love from Kentucky coal operator James Booth who, along with his family and employees, spent $279,300 toward the governor's re-election and inauguration. Booth and Linda, his wife, were co-chairs of Beshear's inaugural committee, and he was recently named to the governor's blue ribbon commission on tax reform.

In late 2010, a Booth company, Cambrian Coal, received a water pollution permit from the Beshear administration, overruling an administrative law judge who had blocked the permit because it did not comply with the law.

An editorial in today’s Lexington Herald-Leader urges Governor Steve Beshear to consider the homes and health of people in Benham and Lynch before allowing destructive surface mining there.

According to the article, two coal operators and their associates spent more than $500,000 to get Beshear re-elected last fall – the largest private-sector donors to Beshear’s campaign.

One donor, James C. Justice II of A&G Coal, plans to mine near Benham and Lynch, threatening the community’s water supply and quality of life. The Beshear administration has given preliminary approval. From the editorial:

With coal money talking so loudly and directly into his ear, the governor should try extra hard to hear average Kentuckians whose homes, health and future are imperiled by the coal industry’s most destructive practices.

The ridges that cradle Lynch — and are at risk of being destroyed — are part of Black Mountain, Kentucky's highest point, which school children fought to save from strip-mining in the late 1990s.

You can’t put a price tag on the history and possibilities that will be lost if Beshear sacrifices this little corner of Kentucky.

The other donor, James Booth of Cambrian Coal, has a permit to mine in Pike County that a judge attempted to block before Beshear’s Energy and Environment Secretary Len Peters overruled him and allowed the permit to go through.

Cambrian’s plan to chop 400 feet off a mountain near Elkhorn City in Pike County will pollute tributaries of the Russell Fork that were already seriously degraded by earlier mining.

The editorial follows an analysis of campaign contributions in The Courier-Journal by Tom Loftus. To read that article, click here.

To read the full Lexington Herald-Leader editorial, click here.

To learn more about Benham and Lynch residents’ efforts to protect their community, click here.

Many KFTC members are concerned about the corrupting influence of money in politics. As residents of a state whose economy and political institutions are dominated by a handful of powerful interests, we understand the problem in a deep way. Money in politics pollutes our water, health and democracy.

KFTC members are also aware that voters in our state have sent to Congress two individuals who are among the most outspoken supporters and opponents of campaign finance reforms in the country. On the one hand, Kentucky voters elect Senator Mitch McConnell, who has proudly declared from the Senate floor that "Spending is speech," and has led efforts to block and repeal campaign finance reforms for more than two decades. On the other side, Kentucky's 3rd District Rep. John Yarmuth recently filed a constitutional amendment to reverse parts of the 2010 Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United and reduce the power of big money in politics. “Corporate money equals influence, not free speech,” Yarmuth said at the time.

For all those reasons and more, KFTC will from time to time share news and information about campaign finance reform efforts and ways individuals can take action. While our existing issue agenda is already full to bursting, we'll do what we can to keep our members informed. Here's a first installment, thanks to a tip from a Louisville KFTC member who shared this recent news:

"Montana’s Supreme Court has issued a stunning rebuke the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 that infamously decreed corporations had constitutional rights to directly spend money on ‘independent expenditures’ in campaigns. The Montana Court vigorously upheld the state’s right to regulate how corporations can raise and spend money after a secretive Colorado corporation, Western Tradition Partnership, and a Montana sportsman’s group and local businessman sued to overturn a 1912 state law banning direct corporate spending on electoral campaigns."

As part of an 80-page decision, the majority opinion stated why the state had a compelling interest in preserving a century-old ban on corporate spending on state elections. The judges were describing politics in Montana, but their reasoning could apply just as well to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. For example, the majority wrote:

"Issues of corporate influence, sparse population, dependence upon agriculture and extractive resource development, location as a transportation corridor, and low campaign costs make Montana especially vulnerable to continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government.”

This bold move from our neighbors out west provides a great opportunity for letters to the editor here at home in early 2012! For more information about writing and sending letters to the editor in Kentucky, see this previous post.