The Mayfield Messenger Sunday, July 14, 2019 5ANewsObituaries

Roger Dale Palmer, 71, of Mayfield, died at 4 a.m. Friday, July 12, 2019, at his residence.

Mr. Palmer was a member of Oak Grove Baptist Church and a self-employed roofer.

Survivors include his son, Kenneth Palmer of Mayfield; daughter, Nakeshia “Antie” Palm-er of Mayfield; brother, Ricky (Michelle) Palmer of Mayfield; two sisters, Delores Dowdy and Carolyn Shelton, both of Mayfield; and three grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his parents, J.D. and Linda Sue (King) Palmer; a broth-er, Richard Palmer; and

a sister, Carolyn Morris.

F u -n e r a l services will be held at 2 p.m. t o d a y ,

Sunday, July 14, at Brown Funeral Home in Mayfield. The Rev. David Gossum will of-ficiate. Burial will fol-low in Oak Grove Bap-tist Church Cemetery. Brown Funeral Home in Mayfield was in charge of arrangements.

Graveside Military rites will be conducted by American Legion Post #26.

Roger Dale Palmer

Kelly Renee Newsom Smith, 49, of Golo, died Thursday, July 11, 2019, at the Ray and Kay Eck-stein Hospice Care Cen-ter in Paducah.

Mrs. Smith attended Chief Cornerstone Bap-tist Church and was a homemaker.

She is survived by her husband, Shane Ray Smith; two daugh-ters, Corinne R. Nichy of Paducah and Am-ber B. Nicy of Murray; her parents, Peggy and Ronald R. Newsom of Golo; and one brother, Lyle Scott Newsome of

Mayfield.She was preceded

in death by her grand-parents, Raymond Newsome; John and Elizabeth Newsome Stembridge; and Loyd and Vernon Hudspeth.

Funeral services are scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 17, at Byrn Funeral Home in Mayfield. The Rev. Keith Allred will offi-ciate. Burial will be in Brewers Cemetery.

Friends may call at the funeral home from 11 a.m. until the service hour Wednesday.

Kelly Renee Newsom Smith

Joseph Tommy Cash, 75, of Paducah, and for-merly of Fancy Farm, died at 10:10 a.m. Satur-day, July 13, 2019, at the Ray and Kay Eckstein

Hospice Care Center in Paducah.

Arrangements were incomplete at Brown Funeral Home in May-field.

Tommy Cash

Palmer

FRANKFORT — Ken-tucky tax revenues out-performed expectations in the recently ended fiscal year, leaving the state with a $194.5 mil-lion surplus on July 1.

The surplus should allow the state to cover some unbudgeted ex-penses, transfer $70 million to the Teach-ers’ Retirement System medical insurance fund, and give a little help to the state’s most troubled pension plan, which provides retirement benefits for most state workers.

While the surplus is good news, it represents less than 2% above the $11.2 billion in tax rev-enue already anticipated during the fiscal year, and it will have only a tiny effect on Ken-tucky’s long-term finan-cial problems caused by the $42.7 billion in un-funded liabilities for its retirement plans.

Thursday’s report showed that state gen-eral fund revenues grew by 5.1% during the year over 2017-18’s revenues and produced nearly $11.4 billion. The state budget anticipated a revenue growth rate of just 3.3%.

State Budget Director John Chilton released the year-end numbers Thursday. He attributed the solid growth to tax changes made by the 2018 General Assembly and to the strength of

Kentucky’s economy.House Republican

leader: Kentucky special pension session likely to start July 19

Largely because of the tax law changes from 2018, which expanded the sales tax to some services, revenue from the state sales tax grew by a strong 9.2% dur-ing the last fiscal year. But because the 2018 law lowered the top in-come tax rates, revenue from the income tax was down 1.3%.

The 2018 tax changes also included a hike in the tax on a pack of ciga-rettes, from 60 cents to $1 per pack. That result-ed in a 67% increase in tobacco tax revenues for the year.

Thursday’s report re-flects only the year-end results of the revenue side of Kentucky’s bud-get, and the $194.5 mil-lion represents only the excess revenues. Chilton said his staff is review-ing the spending side and that review is neces-sary before a final figure can be determined for the amount of available surplus funds.

Chilton said he will is-sue a final report closing out the 2018-19 fiscal year revenue picture be-fore the end of July.

In a separate news re-lease, Gov. Matt Bevin, House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers largely attributed the strong economy to tax and economic develop-

ment policies adopted in the last two and a half years while Republicans have controlled the ex-ecutive and legislative branches of state gov-ernment.

“This is the kind of positive, incremental growth that will sustain the Commonwealth and allow us to continue pro-viding vital public ser-vices, while meeting our obligations to state em-ployees by fully funding our pension systems,” said Bevin, who is run-ning for reelection this year against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Attorney General Andy Beshear.

The state’s 2018-20 budget, passed by law-makers in the spring of 2018, outlines how any surplus money is to be distributed.

The first use of such funds is to cover what is known as “necessary government expenses.” These are costs that were likely to occur dur-ing the past year, but were not funded within the budget. They include things like the expenses in responding to natu-ral disasters or other emergencies. They also include costs to account for soaring costs to op-erate state prisons and local jails that were not fully anticipated in the budget.

The second use of surplus funds is to pay for an expense lawmak-ers struggled to find the money for during the

2018 legislative session — $70 million for health insurance for teachers who retired after June 30, 2010, but who are under age 65.

The 2018-20 bud-get originally proposed by Bevin provided no money for this purpose, though it had tradition-ally been funded in state budgets. Lawmakers responded to the cries of retired teachers who were facing thousands of dollars in annual health care costs and funded the insurance for 2018-19. For 2019-20, law-makers said the Teach-ers’ Retirement System must simply use money from its medial insur-ance fund to pay for it.

But lawmakers added the provision to the bud-get bill that said if any surplus money is avail-able after June 30, 2019, it be used to reimburse Teachers’ Retirement up to $70 million for this purpose.

The budget mandates that any surplus beyond what’s needed for the Teachers’ Retirement System’s medical insur-ance fund go to the state pension plan that covers most state workers.

Chilton also reported Thursday that the sepa-rate state road fund had a good year. The gas tax, sales tax on vehicles, and other transporta-tion taxes generated more than $1.56 billion in revenue — $59.5 mil-lion more than was ex-pected.

BY TOM LOFTUSCourier Journal

Kentucky has a nearly $200M budget surplus

FRANKFORT — At-torney General Andy Beshear announced Friday that his office is moving forward with an investigation into in-flated prescription drug prices by submitting a request for proposal to bolster his legal team.

In March, Beshear launched an investi-gation into pharma-cy benefit managers (PBM), who control the prescription drug market for several state programs. It is alleged that PBMs have over-charged the state health insurance programs for prescription drugs and discriminated against local pharmacies. Bes-hear seeks to recover any profits improp-erly retained by PBMs at the expense of the Commonwealth and its taxpayers.

Beshear said the pro-posal request competi-tive bid process will re-sult in his office hiring additional resources in the most efficient man-ner, where the winning

b i d -der re-c e i v e s no up-f r o n t s t a t e tax dol-l a r s and at-torneys

are only paid a set portion of any monies awarded in a civil ac-tion.

“Kentuckians should never have to ration necessary medication or go without because they cannot afford it,” said Beshear. “We all want to know if the ac-tions of these compa-nies have resulted in all of us paying too much for prescription drugs — and we’re going to find out.”

A report released by the state earlier this year indicated two PBMs kept $123.5 mil-lion last year from the state Medicaid pro-gram by paying phar-macies a lower rate to fill prescriptions than they charged the state for the same drugs.

Staff Report

AG office investigating prescription pricing

Beshear

BOWLING GREEN — As one of the central figures of the infamous Cornbread Mafia, Joe Keith Bickett takes his place among one of the more potent strains of recent Kentucky history.

The network of mari-juana farmers who op-erated primarily out of Marion County, but maintained acres of pot fields in several states, were targeted by law en-forcement in the 1970s and ’80s. Bickett was one of dozens of people who reaped the financial whirlwind of the under-ground drug trade, only to suffer a hard landing when he and dozens of others were prosecut-ed near the end of the 1980s.

On Thursday, Bickett visited Bowling Green as a guest of the Fort-nightly Club, recount-ing his heady days as a marijuana grower in the tiny town of Raywick, his 21 years of incarcera-tion and his present life as a paralegal in Marion County.

“It’s a story that needs to be told,” said Bickett, 71. “We were country boys from humble be-ginnings that skyrocket-ed into something big.”

Attorney Steve Thorn-ton hosted the club meeting at his house, having gotten to know Bickett through the at-torney for whom he now works.

“He has a remarkable story,” Thornton said. “He took something negative and made a

positive out of it, and has a great story to tell along the way.”

The Cornbread Mafia emerged into the public consciousness in 1989, when federal prosecu-tors announced the first batch of arrests of what would become the larg-est known domestic marijuana-growing syn-dicate.

The group’s exploits and downfall were chronicled in a 2012 book by journalist Jim Higdon. Bickett subse-quently wrote two mem-oirs and is involved in the production of at least two documentary films about the Cornbread Mafia, who Bickett said got its name when an associate casually threw out the term as they spirited some pot plants out of one of their Ken-tucky fields in the late 1970s while attempting to stay a step ahead of law enforcement.

“It wasn’t like there was any hierarchy,” Bickett said of the or-ganization. “It was just

a loose-knit bunch of guys, but it was hyped up to be a dangerous or-ganization of some sort.”

Soldiers returning from Vietnam in the 1970s newly familiar with marijuana met with locals in Marion and Washington counties with agricultural exper-tise, and the combina-tion proved lucrative for Bickett and others.

Bickett said he spent the money from dealing marijuana as quickly as he could make it, recall-ing trips to Super Bowls, gambling sprees in Las Vegas and parties in Key West and other locales.

Marijuana laws on the books in Kentucky were lax in those days.

“You could have 10 acres of pot at the time, and it was a misdemean-or (with a) $500 fine,” Bickett said.

In the 1980s, though, federal law enforcement aggressively pursued the Cornbread Mafia, lead-ing to long prison sen-tences for Bickett and many others.

After years of skirt-ing the law and avoiding conviction in prior in-vestigations, Bickett was convicted for his role in the conspiracy and sen-tenced to a 25-year pris-on term in 1989.

“Prison was quite a shock,” Bickett said. “I had a bad drug problem by the time I was con-victed, and if there was a silver lining, (prison) got me straightened out on that end.”

While incarcerated, Bickett cultivated an in-terest in the law, helping inmates file appeals in their cases and looking for legal remedies for his own situation.

Released in 2011, Bickett was hired as a paralegal for a Lebanon attorney, and he said he enjoys helping people through his work.

While the term Corn-bread Mafia becomes more of a shorthand for a certain down-home brand of corruption, the crop that came to define Bickett’s life is being re-examined in legal circles and in the public eye.

While the use and pos-session of marijuana is illegal under federal law, medical use of cannabis is legal in 33 states, and cannabis is legalized for recreational use in 11 states.

Bickett’s brothers op-erate a business in Ray-wick selling CBD prod-ucts derived from hemp, the sister plant to canna-bis that has a negligible amount of the THC in marijuana that produces the drug’s psychoactive effects.

BY JUSTIN STORYBowling Green Daily News

Ex-Cornbread Mafia member offers his ‘remarkable story’

BAC TOTRONG/Daily News

Joe Keith Bickett speaks about his experiences as part of the Cornbread Mafia during a Fortnight-ly Club meeting at a home in Bowling Green.

A5Obits

Brad WestAugust 19, 1962 - July 13, 1999

Twenty Years GoneNever Forgotten

Forever In Our Hearts!Love, Your Family