Last week, the Herald-Leader detailed how Ernie Fletcher and his Transportation Cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert hit up road contractors for bribes—errr, re-election donations, first telling them that $2 billion of Kentucky’s tax money would be blown from 2006 to 2008 on roads to nowhere, and then inviting them to the Governor’s mansion for contributions to Fletcher’s re-election campaign.
What is compelling is the combination of systemic and individual greed at work in the testimony presented. There was a conscious plan to try to use public tax dollars to shake down contractors for money for re-election, and there was also the individual greed of Nighbert at work as he began to come to terms with the end of the Fletcher administration and tried to squeeze as much personal benefit as possible from the contracts.
