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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Environmental activists say LG&E/KU and Kentucky’s two largest cities aren’t meeting pledges to eliminate carbon emissions in the next 15-25 years, as the utility seeks to build more fossil fuel plants. -
Kentucky tax revenues fell $7.5 million short of what was needed in the past fiscal year to trigger cutting the income tax to 3% in 2027. -
A day after Rep. Thomas Massie, a northern Kentucky Republican, took the first step in forcing a vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, survivors rallied at the U.S. Capitol in support. -
A former paperboy passes on a tip about WWII-era espionage in Germantown. Is it true, or an urban legend? -
A Kentucky agency is telling hundreds of families to disregard previous letters telling them to pay back the state for food assistance cards they never requested. -
LG&E says $3B expansion will protect Kentucky ratepayers from data center costs, others are doubtfulKentucky’s largest utility company is proposing a mechanism to make new data centers pay their fair share, but first wants approval to build $3 billion of new gas plants. -
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.
