LOUISVILLE — Gov. Ernie Fletcher said in the final KET debate Monday evening that the “hit list” revealed during the Merit System investigation was “more of a promotion list than a list to let people go.”

During the investigation of alleged hiring improprieties by Fletcher’s administration, a “hit list” came to light with names targeted for termination, according to the Attorney General Greg Stumbo’s office, which pursued the investigation. Eventually, 15 persons, including Fletcher, were indicted and the special grand jury returned 14 more sealed indictments. Fletcher pardoned everyone but himself and later reached an agreement with Stumbo who dropped the charges against him.

His opponent, Democrat Steve Beshear, has hammered Fletcher on the investigation throughout the campaign, and again in his opening statement Monday said Kentucky is in a state “of moral and ethical bankruptcy.”

After the debate, Fletcher told reporters that he understood more people on the list were promoted than were fired from his administration.

The response was an answer to a question by John Stamper of the Lexington Herald-Leader who asked both Fletcher and Beshear what they would do to reduce partisanship, noting the hit list and Beshear’s promise at Democratic campaign rallies to take back the state Senate from Republican control.

Beshear said people expect the opposing parties to engage in partisanship during campaigns but “after that’s over they expect us to come together and work together.”

He also promised to sit down with Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, “when this election is over.”

Williams last week said if Beshear is elected, he shouldn’t expect Republican Senators to welcome him if he is actively recruiting opponents for them.

“What kind of mood do you think our people are going to be in in January?” Williams asked about Beshear’s rumored efforts to recruit candidates to oppose incumbent Republican Senators.

Neither candidate would repudiate mountaintop removal. But each conceded it does environmental damage.

“Any mining damages the environment because it tears up the ground and we all know it,” Beshear said. He said mountaintop removal isn’t supposed to occur except when there is a "higher and better use” for the flat land created by the practice. He said enforcement of current regulations is sufficient to limit the practice.

“There is some impact,” Fletcher said, “but if you do it properly, it’s minimal.” He cited airports and the introduction of elk herds onto land previously mined by mountaintop removal.

Both candidates said the teeming prison population is tied to drug problems and both pushed treatment programs. Beshear wants to increase education efforts as well. He said he would be willing to sit down and discuss solutions with University of Kentucky College of Law Professor Robert Lawson, who wrote much of the state penal code in the 1970s and has recently published two studies of overcrowding in Kentucky prisons.

Fletcher claimed his administration had closed three nursing homes but said by increasing reimbursement rates he’d increased the level of care in nursing homes in explaining why the number of citations had declined during his administration. Beshear countered that Fletcher’s administration had downsized government on the backs of the vulnerable by not hiring enough nursing home inspectors or child care case workers.

Both candidates said they belong to no clubs which employ discriminatory policies. Beshear said he belongs to a hunt club which has no minority members but does not have discriminatory policies and he would resign from the club if it employed them.

Beshear said early childhood education is his first legislative priority – not expanded gambling. When pressed by Tom Loftus of The Courier-Journal about why he’d left out a key component of his campaign, Beshear said expanded gambling would not require budget expenditures and so he listed programs which would.

Fletcher used the opportunity and his closing statement to say gambling is not good for Kentucky, its economy or its “way of life.”

The candidates were pressed to put a cost on their proposals to assist Kentucky residents with college tuition and when they could bring the proposals on line. Fletcher said he would put $25 million in the first two years in his Kentucky Covenant and would subsequently sell bonds and reinvest the money at higher interest rates, using the income to pay for the program.

Beshear never put a price tag on his Kentucky First Scholarship, forgivable loans to students who remain in Kentucky after graduation, but said he expected to implement it within a couple of years.

Fletcher repeatedly said he’d created “a great team” in his administration and said they’d begun to move the state forward. He asked for another four years to continue that.

RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@ cnhi.com.