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 non-Twitter apps such as Threads (@joesonkaky) and BlueSky (@joesonka.bsky.social).
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A GOP lawmaker believes his bill to move up the licensing timeline for medical cannabis businesses in Kentucky will pass into law before the end of the session.
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The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce still leads all groups in legislative lobbying spending, though organizations buying ads to oppose the “Safer Kentucky Act” and pharmaceutical bills closed the gap.
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The petition to remove Kulkarni from the ballot was filed by the former state legislator she defeated in a Democratic primary in 2018, alleging she should be disqualified for a filing error involving her nomination signatories.
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The revenue bill would alter Kentucky’s trigger law to lower the bar for future tax cuts while another bill shifts a $450 million grant program out of the Beshear administration’s control.
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The fast-moving budget bills were amended in the Senate to add $1.7 billion for one-time spending on projects and remove language defunding an alternative sentencing program and threatening K-12 school districts with takeover.
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Less than a year after a new law went into effect to ban certain cash payout video games in Kentucky, one of the companies behind those games is now back in stores with a new product it says is legal.
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The Republican sponsor of a bill to legalize medical cannabis in Kentucky last year has filed a new bill to expand the number of eligible medical conditions for patients when the program goes into effect in 2025.
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A state House committee advanced a bill to fully strip the Kentucky governor’s power to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy, just a day after McConnell announced he will step down from his Senate leadership position.
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After Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that he would step down from Senate leadership in November, GOP legislative leaders praised his legacy of building his party’s power and delivering federal funding back home in Kentucky.
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Student IDs are rarely used to vote and have no verifiable connection to election fraud, but a bill to exclude them as a primary voter ID has advanced through the Kentucky Senate.