Government

After a week of negotiations, the House Judiciary Committee has passed an amended version of a bill that would regulate pseudoephedrine.

Kentucky lawmakers continue to chastise three of the state's Medicaid Managed Care organizations for mismanagement.

Representatives of Kentucky Spirit, Wellcare of Kentucky and Coventry Cares appeared before the program review committee today. Legislators wanted to know whether they had solved problems brought up by health care providers in a January committee meeting.

The MCOs all said the problems were mostly solved and that operations were improving every day. But independent pharmacists and mental health care providers disagreed.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet will begin repairs to the US-60 Ledbetter Bridge Saturday. Intech, Inc., of Lexington, is the prime contractor of the nearly $95,000 repair project. The repairs aim to maintain the safety of the bridge while a new one is built upstream. A heavily enforced three-ton load restriction limits traffic on the bridge to mostly non-commercial vehicles. The bridge will be closed to all traffic from 8 pm Saturday, March 24 to 2 am on Sunday, March 25. and on April 6, the US 60 Ledbetter Bridge will be restricted to one lane of traffic.

The Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce will hold a televised debate May 14th for candidates running in the primaries for mayor and city commission. The Paducah Sun reports the debate will be at 6 p.m. at Crounse Hall on the campus of West Kentucky Community and Technical College. Four mayoral and 19 city commission candidates registered for the debate. The debate will be broadcast live and replayed locally before the May 22nd election.