MEDIA ALERT. Open-records response: Beshear ignoring his own COVID-19 rules at the Governor's Mansion

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For Immediate Release: Monday, May 4, 2020

A response to an open records request filed by the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s first and only free-market think tank, reveals that Gov. Andy Beshear is not abiding by the same COVID-19 protocol he’s forced upon every business and employee in Kentucky he determines “nonessential.”

"While restaurants and businesses providing personal services suffer – with many small business owners facing the possibility of closing their doors for good – the Beshear family is still being served by several employees regularly working in the Governor’s Mansion, including four housekeepers, two chefs, two maintenance workers as well as a butler along with an executive director and assistant director,” Bluegrass Institute president and CEO Jim Waters said.

“If, as the governor claims, he’s ordering out several times weekly to help struggling restaurants and with no scheduled events at the mansion, what possible justification exists for forcing 11 employees to violate the quarantine directives he dramatically claims could be a matter of life and death?” Waters added. “Shouldn’t those workers be staying home, protecting themselves and filing for unemployment just like tens of thousands of their fellow Kentuckians?”

According to information provided by the governor’s office, between March 10 and April 10 some of the mansion employees worked more than 40 overtime hours.

The records also indicate some mansion staff members even continued working full-time despite recently being in contact with fellow workers who took COVID-19 emergency sick leave set aside for workers who contract, or display symptoms of having contracted, the coronavirus or been around an infected individual.

“Suffering business owners and exhausted front-line workers would, I’m sure, be interested in hearing any reasonable justification from the governor explaining his apparent unwillingness to abide by the same protocol forced on his fellow Kentuckians, which is seriously affecting their lives and livelihoods,” Waters said.

For more information or additional comment, please contact Jim Waters at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com, 859.444.5630 ext. 102 (office) or 270.320.4376 (cell).