Joe Sonka
Enterprise Statehouse ReporterJoe Sonka is Kentucky Public Radio’s first enterprise statehouse reporter. He joined the team in October 2023.
Joe has covered Kentucky government and politics for nearly two decades. He grew up in Lexington and moved to Louisville in 2011, covering city and state government at LEO Weekly and then Insider Louisville. He became state government reporter for the Courier Journal in 2019 and was a lead reporter for the newspaper's 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning series on former Gov. Matt Bevin's controversial pardons just before leaving office.
You can email Joe at jsonka@lpm.org and find him at BlueSky (@joesonka.lpm.org).
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Kentucky parents in Scott County were sent unsolicited food assistance cards this summer, but are now being threatened with debt collection if they don’t pay back the state for them. -
Gov. Andy Beshear’s political action committee In This Together reported raising another $824,000 last week, including large contributions from real estate, horse racing and cryptocurrency industries. -
A free market think tank found Kentucky awarded $150 million of single-bid asphalt contracts in the first six months of this year, following $270 million given in 2024. -
A Louisville real estate developer is suing to declare the city-county merger of 2003 unconstitutional and void. -
In this Together, the political action committee of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, raised more than $600,000 in the first half of this year, as he eyes a run for president. -
The electric utilities’ proposal would spend billions of dollars on new power plants to supply future data centers, but is now amended to extend the life of another coal plant. -
Armory Kentucky imported thousands of adult plants that will be ready for harvest in two months, hastening the timeline for when some medical cannabis will be in dispensaries. -
Trump is pushing Republicans to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein, but Congressman Thomas Massie wants a vote to force his administration to release more information. -
Gov. Andy Beshear is joining the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s freezing of $96 million for Kentucky education. -
LG&E and KU are seeking permission to build out $3.7 billion of power plants, largely due to its forecasted rise in data center energy demand. Critics say that demand is speculative and ratepayers could end up holding the bag.
