By Darren Doyle, owner and founder of The Edmonson Voice:
"Threat to our democracy," "danger to transparency," and "protection of democratic principles" are all fun, scary phrases that printed newspapers have spread over the last few weeks as a result of their lobbying against Kentucky House Bill 368, which has passed the House 37-0 and is now headed to the Senate.

I stopped writing editorials and opinion pieces years ago because that's not the real purpose of the news, but there's plenty of inaccurate info that was recently shared by printed papers and I have a right to weigh in.

If passed and signed into law, this bill will eliminate the old requirement that local governments such as fiscal courts, city councils, public school systems, and others must publish public notices and advertisements in a printed newspaper of record.

This law is extremely outdated and it wastes your tax dollars. If the bill doesn't pass, it will continue to waste them.

Printed newspapers all across the state have plastered their editorials everywhere (ironically mostly online) to scare you into believing this is bad for you and that you might even be in harm's way as a result of this "dangerous" bill.

The only things in danger are the pockets of printed newspapers. You see, the requirement that comes along with all these governments having to publish this information in printed paper also comes with a price tag, that you, the taxpayer, fund, and conveniently for the papers, it's not cheap.

While I can't speak for any printed newspaper's budget, on multiple occasions I have received inside information regarding one particular paper's actual mailed out circulation, and it's unbelievably bad in comparison with other papers and online outlets, of course. Bad as in less than 25% of what they actually claim. The real reason that some newspapers are suddenly concerned about this bill is that a big chunk of their funding is about to run out.

Another thing newspapers conveniently left out of their scare tactics is that our local State Representative Michael Meredith sponsored an amendment to the bill that would still require local governments to submit this SAME information to their printed paper of record, but at no cost. Wouldn't this surely save the sake of transparency and raise the victory banners for those fighting for democracy? You would think, but newspapers don't seem to share the same excitement when you add the "no cost" part of it.

A local paper recently falsely accused a former county official of only releasing news information to a "local social media site" (which was obviously supposed to be us) in a fear-mongering editorial that was first published where? You guessed it--on their website and Facebook Page. Why? Because even they know if anyone actually reads it, it will be online.

The Edmonson Voice rarely receives requests to run these types of notices on our network, which is MUCH more cost effective than printed papers. How much more? In some cases, a printed paper charges nearly 50X more.  We have covered countless meetings and forums where these notices were run in a printed newspaper instead of our network, yet most of these meetings have ZERO attendance.

These agencies don't avoid running them on the Voice because they don't want you to know about them. They avoid it because printing them in a newspaper is ridiculously overpriced and inefficient and they simply can't afford any more cost than required. We occasionally get requests to run them and we charge a modest fee. Even with 15K weekly readers, they rarely receive any real traffic on our site.

One example of this is the annual delinquent tax bills. The county is forced to pay for them to be published in a local paper at a cost of around $2,550, according to the Edmonson County Treasurer's Office. Yes, you read that correctly--over two thousand dollars--for ONE WEEK. We do the same thing for anywhere from $55 to $85 for the exact same thing. We would argue that most taxpayers would see that as a waste of YOUR money. With the amendment to the HB 368, governments would STILL be required to submit this info to papers, they just wouldn't be forced to waste tax dollars on them--dollars that are going in the pockets of the newspapers.

According to the Edmonson County Treasurer's Office, the county government was forced to spend $8,950.50 of your tax dollars during the last fiscal year for printed newspaper advertising. In addition, Edmonson County Schools were forced to spend $2,548.62 on the same type of printed ads. With just two county agencies in one year, $11,499.12 of tax dollars was spent on ads in a printed newspaper that nearly no one even saw. And even if they did, it is impossible for a newspaper to prove that it was actually read.

In 2024, we were paid a total of $715 to run advertisements from the Edmonson County Fiscal Court, which was voluntary by the county government. That included a total of 6 different ads running for a total of 13 weeks that the county chose to run by their own fiscal court vote. Any taxpayer can certainly disagree with those funds being spent, but the difference is that a taxpayer can speak to their magistrate or judge-executive if they don't like it. If your government isn't listening to you, you have a right to vote them out.

Edmonson County Schools spent a total of $110 with advertising with the Edmonson Voice last year. Sometimes we even donate these ads and we have never charged to advertise any school sports program, extra-curricular, or academic program for our schools.

Edmonson County is broke as a joke and every dollar matters. We have water issues. We have infrastructure issues. A man died because a county road remains in disrepair, which is now going on three and half years. Remember the $430K Preserving Edmonson Pride project to give a facelift to the Community Center and Courthouse? It's not happening (at least for now) because in order to do it, certain utility poles have to be moved. The cost is more than the county can cover.

This editorial is not for the purpose that digital outlets like us also receive these same tax dollars. In fact, there are so many public announcements that I don't even want on our network because no one reads them. I don't want non-engaging content on this site. Governments choose to advertise with us because they know people will see the content. They only give us the content that really matters and we give them a discount to do so.

It's also important to reiterate: if this bill is passed and signed into legislation, our government and local agencies would still be required to publish this information on their own websites and forums. And yes, it's possible that info could be published on a government-run site and then maliciously edited afterwards, but it's 2025. When that happens, there's always some screenshot-happy social media warrior ready to let the world know. If your local governments are doing this then vote them out. Apparently no one cares one way or another about these public notices here in Edmonson County. If they did, people would attend these meetings.

Of course, it's also completely possible that people actually do care, but maybe the reality is that no one knows about these meetings and announcements because they are only printed in a local paper.

Attorney General Russell Coleman penned the following column about the fight against the Biden-Harris Administration's overreaching water rule.

As Kentuckians, we’ve been blessed by geography. Our Commonwealth is at the heart of America’s inland waterways—providing easy access for our people and our products. Farmers, workers and sportsmen have been good stewards of our God-given resources for generations. We take care of these natural gifts today and work to preserve them for years to come.

It’s too bad the Biden-Harris Administration and its nonsensical green agenda have totally disregarded our deep connection to Kentucky’s resources. Again and again, the EPA and an alphabet-soup of federal bureaucracies have tried to stick their noses into Kentucky’s land, air and water. Why would far-off Washington think its clumsy power grab could take care of Kentucky better than the men and women who live here every day?

WOTUS regulates every pond, ditch and puddle
It’s unlawful, and even worse, it nearly always leads to devastating results.

There’s no better example of this regulatory overreach than the so-called “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule. As initially drafted, it empowered federal bureaucrats to regulate nearly every pond, ditch and puddle in Kentucky—including on private property. Under the rule, Kentucky farmers would be forced to seek expensive permits just to make simple updates to their property. Otherwise, they would face serious legal penalties.

We know what happens when costs go up for farmers and entrepreneurs, especially during historic inflation. Everyday Kentucky families see higher prices at the grocery store, fewer jobs created on Main Street and more foreign imports displacing American-made products.

Big government politicians are relentless
This water rule is like a bad penny. We’ve been battling it for nearly a decade—even helping to secure a major victory at the U.S. Supreme Court. But it just keeps coming back. Big-government politicians are relentless in thinking they can make rules for our land, air and water better than those of us who have been caring for them for generations.

It’s been a long legal fight, and we’re not stopping until we win. We recently argued Kentucky’s case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The court cleared the way for us to continue our years-long effort to send this tired and failed water rule to the trash heap once and for all.

To understand how far back this bad idea goes, we have to look at President Obama’s attempt to tie Kentucky up in red tape. When the Obama-era rule was published in 2015, Kentucky’s Attorney General Jack Conway—a Democrat—took his own party’s President to court.

Kentucky doesn't need the EPA's help
Opposition to the water rule isn’t about political party. The challenges are about the proper role of the state and federal governments. The Commonwealth of Kentucky has the lawful responsibility to protect and preserve our own land, air and waters. We’ve been doing it for years, and—in most cases—we don’t need the EPA’s help.

The chorus opposing President Obama’s terrible water rule grew so loud, and after court rulings striking it down, the EPA eventually rescinded it altogether. This was a major victory for Kentucky families and workers. But it was short lived.
It wasn’t long before the Biden-Harris Administration decided to come after Kentucky growers and producers once again. They dusted off President Obama’s idea and tried to foist a similar rule on Middle America.

Their first attempt at a water rule would have been devastating for Kentucky. Don’t take my word for it. The U.S. Supreme Court made clear the rule was unlawful by going far beyond the federal government’s authority.

Now, they’ve come back with a revised rule, which they say is “slimmed down.” But it still has some of the same problems for Kentucky and contradicts the Supreme Court’s ruling. This is the regulation we’re seeking to continue fighting in court today, alongside farmers, entrepreneurs and home builders. And it’s a fight we must win.

Growing up in rural Western Kentucky and spending my adult life traveling to every corner of this great Commonwealth, I’ve seen good stewardship, and I’ve lived it. Whether it’s the farmer who works the land to feed his family, or the sportsman who passed down the tradition through generations, the respect our people show for our shared home state is on full display.

It’s these men and women—not bloated federal bureaucracy—who will preserve our natural resources for the future. As long as I’m Attorney General, I’ll fight to protect their right to do it.