Hisle emphasizes financial experience for Fiscal Court

Scott Hisle is no stranger to local gov­ern­ment and finance, and if he were elect­ed to the Clark County Fiscal Court this fall, he would bring that back­ground to the table. 

Hisle is the chief finan­cial offi­cer for the Freeman Corporation in Winchester, where he has worked for 40 years. He has also helped over­see mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar bud­gets as a mem­ber of the dis­trict school board, and has served on the boards of the parks pro­gram, pub­lic library, and san­i­tary sew­er district. 

He describes him­self as a life­long “Reagan Republican” who believes in free enter­prise, small gov­ern­ment, and low tax­es, and he once helped lead the effort to roll back a school dis­trict tax increase that he con­sid­ered excessive. 

“People talk about low tax­es, but I’ve got a record of it,” Hisle said. “I’ve been a low-tax guy for a long time.” 

Hisle, 64, grew up in Lexington, where he attend­ed Tates Creek High School and the University of Kentucky. He earned under­grad­u­ate degrees in account­ing and finance, and after col­lege, worked for a tele­phone com­pa­ny in Tennessee as a bud­get ana­lyst while pur­su­ing a master’s degree in busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion, which he com­plet­ed at UK when he moved back to Kentucky. 

He and his wife, Christy, have been mar­ried near­ly 39 years and have three adult chil­dren, all of whom attend­ed George Rogers Clark High School. 

Hisle’s first for­ay in local gov­ern­ment came about almost acci­den­tal­ly. He read in the news­pa­per that a Cadillac deal­er was help­ing to build a wood-struc­ture play­ground at Lexington’s Woodland Park, and he thought Freeman might do some­thing sim­i­lar in Winchester’s College Park, so he approached the parks board. 

“They said, ‘That’s a great idea! You’re in charge of it,’” he recalled. 

“It was one of those things where I was young and dumb and didn’t know what I couldn’t do,” he said. 

So he start­ed a Friends of the Park group and start­ed send­ing out let­ters and helped raise enough mon­ey to build the orig­i­nal wood­en play­ground in 1999. 

“It last­ed over 20 years, so I’m real proud of that,” he said. 

That expe­ri­ence led to Hisle serv­ing on the Parks and Recreation Board dur­ing the time when College Park Gym was ren­o­vat­ed and the indoor pool and nata­to­ri­um were built. 

In 2016, Hisle ran for a seat on the Clark County Board of Education against incum­bent Todd Wilson and won. That was when the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic closed schools for a while, chil­dren were learn­ing online from home, and local gov­ern­ments were get­ting fed­er­al fund­ing to deal with the crisis. 

As a school board mem­ber, Hisle helped over­see a bud­get of more than $50 million. 

At the end of the four-year term, he decid­ed not to run again but to encour­age for­mer school admin­is­tra­tor Brenda Considine to run instead, and she was elected. 

More recent­ly, he served on the library board, and still serves on the san­i­tary sew­er board. 

He has also served on the local Chamber of Commerce board, com­plet­ed the Leadership Winchester pro­gram, and has been active in the Winchester Rotary Club, includ­ing serv­ing as its president. 

Last fall, as he was prepar­ing to retire in 2026 and was pay­ing atten­tion to the the Fiscal Court’s bud­get dis­cus­sions, he thought he could help the coun­ty gov­ern­ment nav­i­gate its dif­fi­cult straits by being a can­di­date for the open 1^st District magistrate’s seat. 

“I decid­ed that the next chap­ter of my life should be giv­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty that’s giv­en so much to my fam­i­ly, by putting a life­time of finan­cial expe­ri­ence, busi­ness expe­ri­ence, and pub­lic ser­vice to work for the peo­ple of Clark County,” he said. “I real­ized my back­ground was unique­ly suit­ed to help.” 

Hisle said he has been retir­ing “grad­u­al­ly,” reduc­ing the num­ber of days he works to three. His com­pa­ny has hired a new senior accoun­tant, who will tran­si­tion to con­troller when he goes to two days a week. 

There is some dis­agree­ment about the county’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion and what caused occa­sion­al shortfalls. 

“I think the key prob­lem that exist­ed in the Fiscal Court was dif­fi­cul­ty aris­ing from the pri­or judge-executive’s lead­er­ship style. It sim­ply did not mesh well with the mag­is­trates’,” he explained, refer­ring to for­mer County Judge Les Yates, who resigned at the first of the year to run unsuc­cess­ful­ly for state representative. 

Hisle said that under the lead­er­ship of the inter­im, gov­er­nor-appoint­ed coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive, for­mer state Senate Minority Leader R.J. Palmer, and his deputy, for­mer Agriculture Commissioner Ed Logsdon, the court has been able to work more effec­tive­ly with the administration. 

The biggest chal­lenge, he said, is the Clark County Fire Department and Emergency Management Services, which “have explod­ed” in cost and now con­sume almost a third of the total coun­ty budget. 

“It’s astound­ing to note that just those two items — fire depart­ment and EMS com­bined — equal more than all the mon­ey col­lect­ed from real estate and tan­gi­ble prop­er­ty tax­es,” he said. “It’s mind boggling.” 

Everything else is fund­ed by occu­pa­tion­al, net prof­its, and insur­ance tax­es and inter-gov­ern­men­tal transfers. 

EMS is joint­ly fund­ed through an arrange­ment with the city (it’s part of the city’s fire depart­ment) and it is going to take coöper­a­tion between the two gov­ern­ments to eval­u­ate it and “deter­mine if there’s a more sus­tain­able path in the future,” he said. 

The can­di­date said he’s not as con­ver­sant about the jail’s bud­get, but he said that if the state would increase the per diem rate it pays coun­ties to house state inmates, that would help. 

He’s also well aware that big health issues involv­ing a few patients can great­ly increase jail and insur­ance costs. 

Hisle was asked whether the Fiscal Court should con­sid­er rais­ing tax­es to address some of the county’s issues. After a long pause, he answered: “The fire and EMS issue is going to be a chal­lenge, but my strong pref­er­ence would be that we explore every oth­er avenue pos­si­ble before hav­ing to raise taxes.” 

Budgets are always dif­fi­cult, he said, but “you’ve just got to push and look for every oppor­tu­ni­ty there might be for savings.” 

On the sub­jects of eco­nom­ic and res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment and farm­land preser­va­tion, Hisle said that he was for “smart, mod­er­ate growth.” 

“I don’t think we want to go down the path of Georgetown or Nicholasville, where they’ve had explo­sive growth,” he said, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to choose the path of towns like Paris that have seen lit­tle growth at all. 

Although there are many forces at play in deter­min­ing how much and where Clark County grows, “the market’s going to deter­mine part of that,” he said. 

He men­tioned that “as Fayette County is run­ning out of room for res­i­den­tial growth,” some of that growth is going to come to Clark County. 

The can­di­date said Winchester is ide­al­ly sit­u­at­ed in terms of trans­porta­tion and prox­im­i­ty to Lexington, and it can be both a “good, small com­mu­ni­ty” where peo­ple want to live, yet also afford “the ameni­ties of a larg­er city.” 

“I think you have to lever­age that in a smart way,” he remarked. 

There are plans by the state to widen U.S. 60, and there’s a san­i­tary sew­er line planed to address the prob­lem of aging treat­ment plants for the Yorktown trail­er park and Verna Hills, and that project will pro­vide capa­bil­i­ty for addi­tion­al san­i­tary sew­er growth in west­ern Clark County to accom­mo­date new development. 

“The widen­ing of U.S. 60 is com­ing, and we need to be pre­pared for it,” Hisle said. 

Hisle said he’s not against also see­ing more growth on Bypass Road and Veterans Memorial Parkway, as well as the parkway’s planned exten­sion to Ky. 627. But a major focus of his will be on expand­ing Boonesboro Road from where the bypass ends now to a point past George Rogers Clark High School to relieve some of the traf­fic con­ges­tion and improve safety. 

He also wants to keep the pres­sure on for the state to pave Colby Road. 

“As a mag­is­trate, all the pow­er you have is just what you can vote for in that meet­ing, but you’ve also got a lot of abil­i­ty to advo­cate for oth­er things,” and he wants to be that kind of mag­is­trate, he said. 

Hisle was asked what he thinks about the sit­ing of data cen­ters for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Those con­tro­ver­sial facil­i­ties use great amounts of water and elec­tric­i­ty and have gen­er­at­ed com­plaints about noise. 

“That’s a tricky issue,” he said. “Obviously, we don’t want cur­rent ratepay­ers to be over­ly bur­dened by the fund­ing of the infra­struc­ture for that. … But I do like the direc­tion the state seems to be going in, leav­ing local con­trol as the dri­ving factor ….” 

One thing Hisle is already work­ing on, even before the elec­tion, is increased trans­paren­cy in coun­ty gov­ern­ment. He has a web­site where he is post­ing not just agen­das of meet­ings, but entire pack­ets of infor­ma­tion relat­ed to those meet­ings, along with bud­gets and oth­er doc­u­ments — all of which are avail­able through the state’s open records law. But most peo­ple don’t have the time to go down to the cour­t­house and request copies of those doc­u­ments. They wouldn’t have to if the gov­ern­ment would just post them online. 

Hisle said he would like to see the Fiscal Court, the Planning Commission, and oth­er boards post those details. 

“They don’t have to keep it hid­den,” he said. 

In his inter­view, Hisle had noth­ing crit­i­cal to say about his Democratic oppo­nent, Jeannie Gwynne, who recent­ly retired after many years as a 911 dis­patch­er. He said she is lik­able and well known in the com­mu­ni­ty, but he would ask the vot­ers to com­pare his expe­ri­ence, abil­i­ty and vision to hers. 

The two are vying for the 1^st District magistrate’s seat cur­rent­ly held by Daniel Konstantopoulos, who is run­ning for state rep­re­sen­ta­tive this year. It is the only com­pet­i­tive magistrate’s race on the Nov. 3 ballot. 

More infor­ma­tion is avail­able on Hisle’s cam­paign web­site, scotthisle.com, and on his Facebook page, Scott Hisle for Magistrate – District 1.