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KU, new owner reach rate settlement

Customers of Kentucky Utilities and Louisville Gas and Electric Co. wouldn’t see an increase in their base rates before January 2013 under a tentative settlement covering the companies’ acquisition by a by Pennsylvania-based PPL Corp. The last rate increase was last month.

The settlement with the Kentucky attorney general’s office, the city of Lexington, major industrial users and others still must be approved by the state Public Service Commission. A decision is expected by the end of the month.

In the settlement, PPL Corp. also agrees to keep commitments to community support and low-income programs.

The acquisition was announced in May.

In addition to the PSC, the settlement must be approved by the Tennessee Regulatory Authority, the Virginia State Corporation Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It was approved last month by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.
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DNA helps identify remains of Korean War veteran from Ky.; service Friday

Another soldier lost in the Korean War is coming home to Kentucky after 60 years.

The remains of Army Sgt. Charles Patterson Whitler, found in North Korea and identified through family DNA samples, will be interred with full military honors on Friday at his hometown of Cloverport in Breckinridge County near Elizabethtown.

Whitler, was 22 and a member of 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, when he went missing on Nov. 2, 1950, during heavy fighting around Unsan, North Korea. Whitler, who had just returned to duty from an earlier wound, was in a unit that became involved in hand-to-hand combat, cut off by large force of Communist Chinese troops.

For the next six decades Whitler’s family had no idea what had actually happened to him. Only in June did the family learn that remains had been found and positively identified as those of Whitler.

“I never knew him, just the stories my family told,” said Whitler’s niece, Mary Furnish of Lexington, who will be attending Friday’s services.
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Judge to rule Thursday on state furlough lawsuit

FRANKFORT A judge said he will rule Thursday on whether state employees need to report for work Friday.

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd heard more arguments Wednesday from state workers suing to block Gov. Steve Beshear’s planned six-day unpaid furlough of most executive branch employees during fiscal year 2011. The first furlough day would be Friday.

Beshear has said that furloughs are needed to cut about $24 million from the state’s $131 million budget deficit and that without furloughs, he would have to fire more than 400 employees. State workers, represented by a union, argue that many state agencies are dangerously understaffed, which furloughs would aggravate. Also, they say, the loss of pay would hurt them financially.

Shepherd said Wednesday that he’s sympathetic to the workers’ plight. Losing six days of pay would hurt a corrections officer trying to support a family on $24,000 a year far more than it would hurt a political appointee who makes $100,000 a year on top of a state pension, which raises fairness concerns, the judge said.

However, to grant an injunction blocking the furloughs, Shepherd said he would have to find that Beshear broke the law. The General Assembly this year gave Beshear permission to do what he did, Shepherd said.
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