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Today’s Lane Links

By Lorie Hailey
Associate Editor

Kentucky and Indiana are aiming to finalize a deal this summer that will detail how the states will collect tolls as part of the Ohio River Bridges Project, reports the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Although the agreement isn’t expected to include specific toll rates, officials with both states said Tuesday that it will identify who will set those rates and what role, if any, a bi-state authority will play, the paper says. Reaching an agreement by late July would allow the states to answer key questions in time to seek final proposals for the $2.6 billion project, said Kendra York, Indiana’s public finance director.

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About two out of every five Democratic voters in Tuesday’s presidential primary in Kentucky chose “uncommitted” instead of voting for President Barack Obama, reports the Lexington Herald Leader.

The high “uncommitted” vote in the Democratic presidential primary in Kentucky “doesn’t say much for the president but you have to remember that this is only a minority of the electorate because of the low voter turnout statewide,” Transylvania University political science professor Don Dugi told the newspaper.

But State Republican Party Chairman Steve Robertson was ready Tuesday night to read a lot into it.

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Ford Motor Co. is getting its blue oval logo back, the Associated Press reports.

Moody’s Investors Service raised Ford’s debt ratings to investment-grade Tuesday for the first time in seven years. The upgrade means that all Ford’s assets, including factories and the blue oval logo, are back in the company’s hands and will no longer be used to secure the company’s debt, AP says. Ford posted the assets as collateral in 2006 in order to get a $23.5 billion loan and avoid bankruptcy.

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Insurance market reforms enacted in the 1990s resulted in higher premiums and reduced access to coverage for Kentucky consumers, according to a case study released Tuesday by Healthcare Aware of Kentucky, a new, Louisville-based, health-care consumer-awareness group, and America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).

The Kentucky experience highlights the significant unintended consequences of enacting guarantee issue and community rating reforms without an individual mandate.

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Automakers are pushing factories and workers to the limit to try to meet burgeoning demand for new vehicles, USA TODAY reports.

Some plants are adding third work shifts. Others are piling on worker overtime and six-day weeks. And Ford Motor and Chrysler Group are cutting out or reducing the annual two-week July shutdown at several plants this summer to add thousands of vehicles to their output.

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