GOP candidates split on taxes and growth

Clark County Republicans

Republicans run­ning for local office in Clark County say they don’t want high­er tax­es. But dur­ing a can­di­dates forum Saturday at the Cardinal Community Center, only two said unequiv­o­cal­ly that they wouldn’t raise tax­es regard­less of conditions.

Those two were Magistrate Ernest Pasley, who is run­ning for re-elec­tion in District 2, and Eric Vetter, a can­di­date for coun­ty judge-executive.

During the first part of the debate, District 2 can­di­dates were asked under what cir­cum­stances they would con­sid­er a tax increase and what ser­vices they would con­sid­er reducing.

“OK, I don’t like either one of those,” Kelley Nisbet said, draw­ing laugh­ter from the audience.

She said that no one could defin­i­tive­ly say they would not raise tax­es or cut spend­ing until they’re in office and know the situation.

“I think every­thing needs to be on the table,” she said.

Bryan Howard, a retired fire­fight­er, said he wouldn’t want to raise tax­es, but he espe­cial­ly wouldn’t want to cut emer­gency ser­vices such as fire pro­tec­tion or law enforcement.

Pasley, how­ev­er, was blunt.

“I will not raise your tax­es,” he said.

Instead, he said, he would go to Frankfort or Washington, D.C., and “find the mon­ey” through state and fed­er­al grants.

‘Never say never’

“Anytime you say ‘nev­er,’ it comes back and bites you,” Winchester City Commissioner Shannon Cox said lat­er in the forum when the same ques­tion about rais­ing tax­es was pre­sent­ed to can­di­dates for coun­ty judge-executive.

Cox said the coun­ty needs to con­sid­er every alter­na­tive first, but he wouldn’t rule out a tax increase if necessary.

“It would be the last thing I would ever do,” Magistrate Steve Craycraft said.

“I don’t think you can nev­er say nev­er,” can­di­date Justin Charles agreed.

But Vetter came close to say­ing it.

“I will say I wouldn’t raise tax­es over the next four years if elect­ed,” Vetter vowed.

Vetter said that, as judge-exec­u­tive, he would focus on reduc­ing the cur­rent tax bur­den and would let eco­nom­ic growth and grants cov­er any need­ed rev­enue increases.

Not the PVA’s job

Pasley said the cur­rent prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion admin­is­tra­tor had raised landown­ers’ assess­ments, so there was no need to increase rates as well.

PVA Jada Brady could not attend and speak for her­self because she had the flu.

“I don’t believe in prop­er­ty tax­es at all,” said her pri­ma­ry oppo­nent, Allan Curtis.

Although doing away with prop­er­ty or ad val­orem tax­es would require a state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment, Curtis vowed to low­er prop­er­ty tax­es by accu­rate­ly and fair­ly assess­ing homes, busi­ness­es, and farms.

“The PVA’s job is not to gen­er­ate rev­enue for local gov­ern­ment,” he said, it is only to deter­mine the fair mar­ket val­ue of the prop­er­ty to be taxed.

Curtis said he doesn’t know which mod­el Brady uses to deter­mine val­ues, but dif­fer­ent meth­ods yield dif­fer­ent outcomes.

He also said he would like to meet per­son­al­ly with home­own­ers and let them make their case about home addi­tions and oth­er fac­tors before they’re sur­prised by a big bill.

“You’ve got to engage peo­ple very ear­ly on,” he said.

‘Waste of money’

Although there was broad agree­ment on many ques­tions dur­ing the three-hour forum host­ed by the Clark County Republican Women’s Club and the Republican Party of Clark County, there also were a few differences.

For exam­ple, dur­ing the seg­ment for the three pri­ma­ry can­di­dates for District 2 mag­is­trate, Pasley said one of his pri­or­i­ties would be hav­ing an ambu­lance in the Clark County fire sta­tion at Trapp.

His oppo­nent, Howard, who is from Trapp and is an emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cian, said, “that’s a waste of tax­pay­ers’ money.”

Howard said there are too few runs in the area to jus­ti­fy hav­ing an ambu­lance at Trapp. But he said he had talked with Winchester Fire/EMS Chief Chris Whiteley about hav­ing an advanced EMT assigned to the fire­house there.

Nisbet, a real estate bro­ker, crit­i­cized the Fiscal Court for buy­ing a build­ing for a third coun­ty fire sta­tion with­out first hav­ing an appraisal.

“I want to bring a strong com­mit­ment to account­abil­i­ty,” she said.

Pasley said one place he would look for sav­ings would be the coun­ty jail.

“We spend more on the jail than we do on EMS, the fire depart­ment and our sheriff’s depart­ment com­bined,” he said.

In the past three years, he said, two ille­gal immi­grants who need­ed dial­y­sis cost the tax­pay­ers “half a mil­lion dol­lars.” He would have had the feds come and get them and deport them.

Howard sug­gest­ed there be a study to con­sid­er merg­ing the city and coun­ty fire depart­ments or find­ing ways to avoid dupli­ca­tion of services.

One of his pri­or­i­ties, he explained, is “mak­ing sure we use our tax dol­lars wisely.”

But Pasley said the coun­ty has already done two stud­ies on fire ser­vice, in 2004 and 2009, and it doesn’t need to spend mil­lions of dol­lars on anoth­er one that might sug­gest the city run the fire ser­vice for the whole county.

Where growth occurs

Where and how the coun­ty should grow was anoth­er point of contention.

“I want us to grow, but I do not want us to lose our rur­al atmos­phere,” said Christy Bush, a long­time edu­ca­tor who is run­ning for District 3 magistrate.

She said she has seen many recent high school grad­u­ates move away because they think there are no oppor­tu­ni­ties for them here, and she wants them to “find our com­mu­ni­ty a place they can call home.”

Bush said one of the county’s pri­or­i­ties should be com­plet­ing the east­ern bypass, or Veterans Memorial Parkway, around Winchester and adding the util­i­ties need­ed to devel­op that corridor.

She and the oth­er can­di­date for District 3, Ben Moberly, both favor expand­ing the Winchester Industrial Park to pro­vide good jobs and greater rev­enue for the county.

Bush said the park’s loca­tion near Interstate 64 and the Mountain Parkway is ide­al, and that the coun­ty needs to take advan­tage of its potential.

To build more afford­able hous­ing, attract retail busi­ness­es and restau­rants, and pro­vide high-qual­i­ty pub­lic edu­ca­tion and ser­vices, indus­tri­al growth is essential.

“We have to keep that mov­ing for­ward,” she said.

The park is near­ing capacity.

“We still have 30 acres left, and I think we need to make sure those 30 acres are filled with the most … rev­enue-pro­duc­ing indus­tries that we can find,” Moberly said.

But he also wants to make sure that com­pa­nies giv­en incen­tives to locate there are “going to be good stew­ards of our com­mu­ni­ty and give back to our cit­i­zens as much as we give to them.”

In the debate between the 5^th District can­di­dates, incum­bent Chris Davis and chal­lenger Mike Flynn agreed that Clark County needs more growth, but dif­fered about where it should occur.

Davis favors devel­op­ing the U.S. 60 cor­ri­dor east of Lexington, which the state plans to widen, and where the coun­ty is cur­rent­ly get­ting ease­ments to expand san­i­tary sew­er ser­vice, prob­a­bly with­in the next year.

“I remain com­mit­ted to improv­ing our crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture so that we can set the stage for growth and pros­per­i­ty in our coun­ty,” Davis said.

In response to a ques­tion about how to bal­ance eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment with pre­serv­ing the county’s rur­al, agri­cul­tur­al, and small-town char­ac­ter, Flynn said local gov­ern­ments should tar­get the east side of the com­mu­ni­ty where the new bypass is and work with WMU and oth­er util­i­ty com­pa­nies to put in place the infra­struc­ture need­ed to locate com­mer­cial busi­ness­es and res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment there.

He said he doesn’t want to see Winchester become like Nicholasville, where one can’t see where Fayette County ends and Jessamine County begins. The city lim­its of Nicholasville and Lexington abut each oth­er on U.S. 27.

“I do not want to be a bed­room com­mu­ni­ty to Lexington,” Flynn said. “I would be in favor of growth on this end of the com­mu­ni­ty and very struc­tured growth on that end.”

Davis dis­agreed, say­ing the coun­ty needs to focus its growth in the north­west­ern part of the coun­ty because that’s where the indus­tri­al park is and where there is already infra­struc­ture, such as the Strodes Creek waste­water treat­ment plant, rail, nat­ur­al gas, and oth­er utilities.

He indi­cat­ed he wasn’t con­cerned about the loss of prime farm­land in that area.

“We’ve got a very vig­or­ous farm com­mu­ni­ty, and I think it’s going to stay that way,” he said.

Merged government?

One issue Flynn and Davis agreed on was that there should not be a Winchester-Clark County uni­fied gov­ern­ment like that of Lexington-Fayette County.

“I am not in favor of merged gov­ern­ment. I am in favor of inte­grat­ing ser­vices,” said Flynn, who is a for­mer city man­ag­er and cur­rent­ly inter­im city man­ag­er of Winchester.

Flynn said that deliv­er­ing pub­lic ser­vices is becom­ing increas­ing­ly cost­ly, and the Fiscal Court “needs to hon­est­ly assess where we stand finan­cial­ly and think cre­ative­ly and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly” with oth­er com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers about how to work togeth­er to “build a real­is­tic road map towards goals that ben­e­fit Clark County as a whole.”

Davis said that the merged gov­ern­ment had cre­at­ed “an enor­mous bureau­cra­cy” for Lexington and Fayette County.

“I would argue that it hasn’t saved them a dime,” he said.

It cer­tain­ly isn’t the answer for a com­mu­ni­ty the size of ours, he added.

However, Davis said it is some­times ben­e­fi­cial for the two gov­ern­ments to work togeth­er to pro­vide ser­vices, and they already have mul­ti­ple inter-local agree­ments to that end.

Next county judge

Candidates for coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive also weighed in on the ques­tion of growth.

Vetter, a phar­ma­cist and retired Navy cap­tain, start­ed the dis­cus­sion by say­ing he is “the most pro-growth can­di­date” in the race.

Vetter said Clark County is “falling behind” its neigh­bors in population.

In the past 25 years, he said, Clark County has grown by a lit­tle more than 4,000 peo­ple, while Madison County has grown by 20,000 and Montgomery by 10,000.

What he wants, he said, is “not reck­less growth, not paving over every­thing we love, but start prepar­ing for inten­tion­al growth.”

That means hav­ing sites that are “build-ready” and util­i­ties for those sites, he said.

“If we don’t choose how we grow, some­one else might choose for us, and we may not like the results,” he said.

Vetter is one of five can­di­dates for coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive, includ­ing four who are vying for the Republican nom­i­na­tion. The office is cur­rent­ly held by Democrat R.J. Palmer, who was appoint­ed by the gov­er­nor to fill the vacan­cy cre­at­ed by the recent res­ig­na­tion of Judge Les Yates. Craycraft briefly served as inter­im coun­ty judge.

Whoever wins the GOP pri­ma­ry will face the lone Democrat in the race, Vaché King.

Craycraft has been a farmer, fac­to­ry work­er, small busi­ness own­er, and com­mer­cial real estate investor.

“Farming is our num­ber one indus­try in this coun­ty, and make no mis­take about it, farm­ing is eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,” he said.

Craycraft, who called him­self a “farm preser­va­tion­ist,” said local gov­ern­ments need to look at where “the real mon­ey” is. Many peo­ple mis­tak­en­ly believe that res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment pro­duces a sig­nif­i­cant amount of rev­enue, but stud­ies have shown that for every dol­lar in tax rev­enue a res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment gen­er­ates, it costs more than a dol­lar in pub­lic services.

“The real mon­ey that dri­ves our com­mu­ni­ty is in indus­try — the net prof­its tax and the pay­roll tax. That’s how you grow,” he said.

Data centers debated

A con­tro­ver­sial issue nation­al­ly that coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive can­di­dates were asked was where they stood on allow­ing data cen­ters to come into the community.

Data cen­ters used for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant tax rev­enue but also con­sume large amounts of elec­tric­i­ty and water, which can raise util­i­ty rates for home­own­ers and busi­ness­es and cre­ate envi­ron­men­tal problems.

Craycraft said it’s a “tough” issue that involves bal­anc­ing prop­er­ty rights with the need to gen­er­ate “a ton of mon­ey” for the county.

“I’m very much in favor of pre­serv­ing the char­ac­ter of our beau­ti­ful coun­ty, but I can’t say I’m against it,” he said.

Charles gave a straight­for­ward answer.

“I would vote for data cen­ters,” he said. “I would vote for almost any indus­try … that would bring us more rev­enue, more jobs, and help our coun­ty to grow.”

“As an elec­tri­cian, I know that they do put a load on our pow­er grid,” Charles said, but he said the coun­ty could work with Clark Energy and Kentucky Utilities “to help them pre­pare for that.”

As a retired Navy cap­tain, Vetter said he con­sid­ers the strate­gic impor­tance of arti­fi­cial intelligence.

“If we don’t put the data cen­ters in the United States some­where, we’re going to lose out to China,” he said. “They’re going to become the next world leader in AI.”

It would make sense to put data cen­ters here because of our county’s prox­im­i­ty to coal and coal-fired pow­er plants, he said.

Vetter said he would wel­come the centers.

So would Cox, a long­time city commissioner.

“Imagine what a bil­lion-and-a-half-dol­lar project would pay in prop­er­ty tax­es,” he said.

Imagine what 100 employ­ees earn­ing $75,000 to $150,000 a year would do for the county’s occu­pa­tion­al tax rev­enue, he added.

“That is what they are able to con­tribute to your com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

‘Experience counts’

Yates, the coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive who resigned to run for state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, served in the state leg­is­la­ture once before, for a sin­gle term. His oppo­nent is Magistrate Daniel Konstantopoulos, who had the micro­phone to him­self Saturday because Yates didn’t attend.

“I don’t know the rea­son,” Yates can­celed Friday night, said the mod­er­a­tor, Richard Nelson of the Commonwealth Policy Institute.

All the can­di­dates had pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed, accord­ing to Kim Clark Elkins of the Republican Women’s Club.

“You’re going to hear a lot about ‘expe­ri­ence counts,’” said Konstantopoulos, who is serv­ing his third term on the Clark County Fiscal Court. “My oppo­nent touts all his expe­ri­ence, but here’s the fact. He’s passed just as many bills as I have — zero.”

“I promise today that I will not pro­pose the same bill he did, to take away your right to vote straight Republican,” he said, tak­ing a dig at Yates, who co-spon­sored a bill that would have done away with straight-tick­et vot­ing. Kentucky is one of the few states that allow straight-par­ty vot­ing rather than requir­ing vot­ers to select can­di­dates individually.

Asked what would be the first bill he would file as state rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the 73^rd District, Konstantopoulos said it would be a pro­pos­al to bring driver’s licens­ing back to every county.

A few years ago, the state took driver’s licens­ing away from the cir­cuit clerks’ offices and cre­at­ed region­al Department of Motor Vehicles offices to han­dle that role.

That approach isn’t work­ing, Konstantopoulos said.

He said he would work with Sen. Greg Elkins, R‑Winchester, to “come up with a res­o­lu­tion for that problem.”

“I think it’s ridicu­lous,” he said, for a res­i­dent to have to dri­ve to anoth­er city and “wait for hours to get a piece of paper,” and then lat­er get their lam­i­nat­ed license.

In response to a ques­tion about school choice, Konstantopoulos men­tioned that his wife has been an edu­ca­tor in Clark County for more than 20 years. And although he sup­ports fund­ing for pub­lic edu­ca­tion, he also sup­ports “the par­ents’ right to choose where their kids go to school and how they’re educated.”

In 2024, Kentucky vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly defeat­ed a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would have used pub­lic funds to pay for chil­dren to attend pri­vate or char­ter schools.

As writ­ten, the Kentucky Constitution allows tax­pay­er dol­lars to be used only for “com­mon schools,” which courts have inter­pret­ed to mean pub­lic schools.

Konstantopoulos said that as a state leg­is­la­tor, he would work to con­tin­ue to cut the state income tax, cre­ate an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to small busi­ness­es, and secure infra­struc­ture fund­ing to pro­mote eco­nom­ic growth.

“I am the only one in this race who tru­ly under­stands how local gov­ern­ment works, and I will be able to use that expe­ri­ence in Frankfort to draft com­mon­sense leg­is­la­tion that helps us all,” he said.

Editor’s note: The debate was live-streamed on YouTube under the title 2026 Clark County Republican Candidates Forum — April 18^th. However, because of tech­ni­cal issues, not all of the seg­ments were ful­ly record­ed. You can view that video below.