Sure, we’re all thinking about Steve Beshear’s latest drama with a coal executive doing lobbying without being registered to lobby.

But let’s hop back about a year.

Remember Phil Osborne? Turns out he had a bit of a similar difficulty with a different industry.

Excerpts from a September 21, 2008 Courier-Journal story by Tom Loftus:

Recent e-mails from a Lexington public relations executive to Gov. Steve Beshear’s office have raised new questions about what constitutes lobbying.

The executive, Phil Osborne, made a detailed case on behalf of a client, the Plantmix Asphalt Industry of Kentucky, in an e-mail to Beshear’s communications director last month.

Osborne warned of dire implications if policies being written in the Transportation Cabinet resulted in the state doing more road projects with concrete, asphalt’s rival surface.

He sent an e-mail to Beshear’s scheduler the next day asking for a meeting at which the asphalt group could make its case directly to Beshear.

Osborne, chief executive officer of Preston-Osborne, is not registered to lobby executive branch officials for the asphalt group.

-SNIP-

…[T]he head of the association representing concrete contractors said he believes the e-mail indicates Osborne should have been registered.

“That’s called a lobbyist, isn’t it? Trying to influence someone for a certain product or a certain way of doing things?” said Barry Sanders, executive director of the Kentucky Concrete Pavement Association.

-SNIP-

Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause of Kentucky, said he believes Osborne should have been registered to lobby before sending his e-mails to the governor’s office.

Doesn’t sit so well, does it? Especially not after you recall that Osborne declined to take a job as Beshear’s top communications guy after potential conflicts of interest arose regarding his clients and state government.

These are all just little misunderstandings being taken out of context, though, aren’t they? They’re also total rarities and nothing bad ever happens in Frankfort, ever, amen.