KyKurmudgeon

Regular H-L readers know we’ve endured significant budgetary cutbacks in the last year or so, including multiple rounds of buyouts and layoffs. Regular visitors to KyKurmudgeon probably realize, from the reduced number of posts and the reduced number of columns, that I’ve been spending more time on other editorial duties as a result of our staff losing one-and-a-half positions in earlier rounds of reductions.

Well, it’s about to get worse. As a result of the most recent round of layoffs, Friday will be the last day for one of our editorial writers. It’s a tremendous loss of knowledge, experience, creativity for our pages, not to mention a tremendous loss of humor in our office discussions. And personally more me, it means I’m going be writing a lot more editorials in the future as well as helping out with more page production work, both of which will cause me to spend even less time blogging.

Plans at the moment have me continuing to write Sunday columns on a regular basis - or at least a semi-regular basis since our numbers are now so low that the absence of any of my colleagues due to vacation or illness will drastically increase the workload on those who remain in the office. Those columns will continue to be posted here at KyKurmudgeon. And I hope to throw in other posts occasionally as time allows.

This new situation also means I will spend less time on the ground in Frankfort than I have in recent years, although I still hope to be there for as much of future legislative sessions as possible and for other important events. Since the best information is the information you gather up close and personal, I am way disappointed by this situation.

But it is what it is, and I and my remaining colleagues will try our best to continue producing quality work and to continue the lively conversation we’ve had with our readers over many years. But without our friend and longtime colleague it won’t be nearly as much fun as it has been.