You thought the Ring Road scandal in Hardin County was enough to send Joe Prather packing, didn’t you? Haha, right.

While a dying newspaper in Louisville is spending every cent it’s got protecting Steve Beshear, I’m going to spend a bit of time doing what I do best: complaining. About campaign finance shenanigans.

While Jerry Abramson is busy traipsing around the state talking about Steve Beshear’s recent trip to India, claiming the efforts are going to be as big as Martha Layne Collins’ efforts with Toyota, we just couldn’t resist raising a few questions that make us more than suspicious.

Here goes…

Larry Hayes, Jennie Prather and Jimmie Wheeler are listed as the officers for DSP, LLC, the limited liability corporation that owns 771 N. Black Branch Road – otherwise known as the T.J. Patterson Industrial Park.

According to the News-Enterprise, the facility Steve Beshear is luring here from India will be located in that very same industrial park:

Tyle joined state and local officials in announcing the construction of Uflex’s first manufacturing facility in the U.S. It will become the first company from India to create a greenfield project — one built from scratch on property where no previous facilities exist — in the U.S., said Anantshree Chaturvedi, director of Uflex and Chairman Ashok Chaturvedi’s son.

The plant, which will produce polyester packaging film, will be constructed in T.J. Patterson Industrial Park on Black Branch Road in Elizabethtown.

In total, the company plans a capital investment of $180 million for the plant, which will be built in two phases.

And according to Hardin County Property Valuation Administrator Danny Hutcherson’s website, 771 N. Black Branch Road is the last address in the 700 block. 850 N. Black Branch Road and 875 N. Black Branch Road are owned by the Elizabethtown/Hardin County Industrial Foundation. You can learn more about their available properties by clicking here. Note that on the odd-numbered side of the road is I Pay Technologies – at 801 N. Black Branch Road.

If this is the location of the fancy Indian plant, wouldn’t it seem that Larry Hayes owns the property one door down and across the street?

Read the rest of this boring, corrupt mess after the jump…

Other property owners on that street:

• 641N. Black Branch Road: Elizabethtown/Hardin County Industrial Foundation
• 730 N. Black Branch Road and 750 N. Black Branch Road: Co-owned by Metalsa Structural Products and the Lexington Elizabethtown 730 Corp
• 800 N. Black Branch Road: Elizabethtown/Hardin County Industrial Foundation
• 801 N. Black Branch Road: I Pay Technologies

DSP, LLC also owns property at 907 Peterson Drive, which is just around the corner from that site. It houses Service First Warehouse and Distribution.

On April 22 – just a day before Steve Beshear’s office announced the India deal – Dana Bowers, an executive with I Pay Technologies, along with her husband, Michael, a member of the board of the Elizabethtown/Hardin County Industrial Foundation, each contributed $1,000 to the Beshear-Abramson campaign.

What’s interesting is that Beshear left for India on Saturday, April 19. According to his KREF report, the day before he departed, there were 27 individual $1,000 contributions made to his campaign from Hardin County. The most recent fundraiser around that time was Joe Prather’s $67,000 fundraiser that took place on March 30.

You tell me that’s not pay-for-play with the same bad actors that have been haunting Kentucky for decades.