Boulder trip: Gray flying separately

When attendees of Commerce Lexington’s trip to Boulder settled into their seats on the charter plane this morning, Vice Mayor Jim Gray wasn’t among the group.

Gray, who is heading to Boulder, gave up his seat on the charter plane at the request of Mayor Jim Newberry. Instead of the charter, Gray is taking a commercial flight out of Blue Grass Airport.

After looking at the preliminary list of trip attendees, Newberry noticed that 13 of the 15 Urban County Council members were going, Newberry said. “It struck me as though we needed to make some kind of arrangements for local government to continue in the unlikely event that something happened to the airplane.”

So during a council work session, Newberry passed a note to Gray, Councilwoman Linda Gorton and Councilman Chuck Ellinger II that said one of the four of them needed to travel separately.

“I asked them if any of them had any particular preference,” Newberry said. “Jim agreed to do it. So when he agreed, that was the end of the conversation.”

Asking someone to fly separately was simply a precautionary measure, Newberry said. “I don’t like to think about it, but I appreciated his willingness to travel separately.”

- Michelle Ku

Comments

[jbuhl]

I grew up in KY but live in Boulder now. Believe me it is money well spent.

Actually I'm really glad they decided to do this. Talking with coworkers yesterday we realized that (God forbid) if anything happened we would be left with Ed Lane and KC Crosbie as our choices to run government.

At the time, we didn't know George Myers was flying separately. Just a generally good idea, still.

[Humble Pie]

How's this newsworthy?. Everyone knows it takes a 757 to carry Gray and his ego.

While the rest of the country has seen the number of uninsured people continue to rise, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a well-respected national think tank, released data on April 26 ranking Kentucky No. 1 in the nation in the growth of employer health insurance and fourth in the drop in the number of uninsured people.