COVINGTON, Ky. — A group of business leaders is pushing for a change in the city of Covington’s power structure. It could be on the November ballot if a petition is successful.

Covington’s current form of government is rare among other Kentucky cities. It consists of four elected city commissioners, an elected mayor and a city manager appointed by the commission.

Richard Dickmann, owner of Covington restaurant Smoke Justis, said the current system is not conducive to business.

“One of the concerns I’ve had since I’ve been here is the amount of time it takes to get anything done,” he said. “It takes four meetings a month to run the city because everything has to be done in a public forum. If a company wanted to relocate their business, and they were looking at three different cities, it may take a longer time for the city of Covington to give them the nod.”

Dickmann is the chair of a committee of local business and political leaders, Covington Forward. It’s trying to get enough signatures to place an initiative on the November ballot that would change Covington’s government to the more common mayor-council form.

City councils can have up to 12 members. In contrast to the current form in which the mayor has equal voting power to commissioners, the mayor acts as more of the city’s CEO in the mayor-council format. That includes the power to veto and hiring city workers.

Dickmann said under this format, council members would have less on their plate than the current commissioners.

“You can be more focused on the needs of the community and not the everyday running of the government,” he said. “It’s obvious to a lot of cities that the mayor-council is a better form of government.”

Joe Meyer, Covington’s current mayor who will be leaving office by the time this would go into effect, supports the new model. Before it can go into effect, the group needs to get enough signatures on its petition. At that point, it would be up to the voters.

Covington is the only city in Kenton County with a city manager form of municipal government. 

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WYMT) – Voter registration numbers went up in June in the Commonwealth, officials with the Secretary of State’s Office announced Tuesday.

According to Secretary of State Michael Adams’ Office, Kentucky saw 9,693 new voter registrations last month.

4,362 voter registrations were removed from the rolls.

Of the 4,362 registrations removed, 3,030 were of voters who have already died, while 603 were from those convicted of felonies. 554 had moved out of state.

Officials with the Secretary of State’s Office said Adams promised to defend from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth’s lawsuit Kentucky’s bipartisan election integrity statute.

The statute, signed into law by Gov. Andy Beshear, is designed to prevent registered voters in other states from voting in Kentucky.

“Kentucky’s elections are a national success story,” Adams said. “Three years ago, Kentucky enacted a bipartisan law to prevent voting in more than one state in a presidential election. Now that a presidential election is underway, a fringe left-wing activist group is trying to undo that law and sow chaos and doubt in our elections. We believe voters should vote in only one state, and we expect to prevail in court.”

Republican registration increased by 4,947 voters, which is a 0.31% increase.

Democratic registration decreased by 1,717 voters, which is a 0.11% decrease.

Registration for those voting for a third party or “other” political affiliation went up by 1,502 voters, which is a 0.41% increase.

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Located in Morehead, Kentucky, the new distillery is expected to open in late 2025.

The Kentucky Bourbon scene grows ever larger with the addition of Eastern Light Distilling, which began construction of its new distillery on 2 July with a groundbreaking ceremony.

Eastern Light comes from master distiller Caleb Kilburn and and CEO Cordell Lawrence, who previously worked together at Kentucky Peerless Distilling.

“We are thrilled to celebrate this important moment as we bring Eastern Light Distilling to life,” Kilburn said. “Being from Eastern Kentucky, I’m grateful for the opportunity to grow the industry I’m so passionate about in the region I call home.”

Eastern Light will contract distill, working with craft producers from product inception to branding.

The 230-acre campus will feature a 50,000-square-foot distillery, nine rickhouses with an average capacity of 33,000 barrels each, a full bottling facility, and a visitor experience. Once up and running, the distillery will employ more than 50 full-time staff and produce upwards of 97,000 barrels per year.

“Eastern Light will fill a tremendous need in the Bourbon industry, operating with a fully customisable solutions-based model that will help craft distillers and Bourbon brands to not only reach their goals and bring their products to market, but to flourish,” Lawrence said.

“We believe in removing barriers to entry in the spirits space so that we can share our passion with like-minded creators while prioritising quality, inspiring creativity, and investing in the state’s signature Bourbon industry and the health of the region.”

Eastern Light joins a crop of new distillery projects that are either focused on contract distilling or plan on making it a core business component. The past decade saw a rise in non-distillery producers as entrepreneurs and upstart craft brands sought a piece of the Bourbon market without the high costs of building a distillery or the long wait times for whiskey to mature.

In October 2023, the team behind Bardstown Bourbon Company pledged more than US$350 million over the next 10 years to build a new distillery for contract whiskey production in the US. Located in Kentucky, Whiskey House will be the ‘first’ distillery designed from scratch to focus entirely on large-scale, flexible, contract whiskey production.

In January 2024, Garrard County began production as the largest independently owned distillery in Kentucky, with contract distilling as a part of its model.