“I am losing confidence and growing increasingly concerned with the management and decision-making at the University of Kentucky,” Beshear posted on social media, in a rare remark on university actions. Barnhart will be paid $950,000 per year through August 2030 for his new job, but few specifics about what the role will entail have been released. The university has previously said Barnhart’s new salary will come from the athletics budget.

Barnhart’s new job drew the ire of some in the UK community, with Brett Setzer, a prominent booster for UK football, calling the decision “deeply misguided” in a letter to university officials. In his post, Beshear said he’d been told that Van Tatenhove was the only candidate not recommended for the position by the school’s faculty, and that UK previously said the dean must be approved by the board of trustees, but now says that approval is not needed. Some background on the $950k no work job for Mitch Barnhart: University of Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart is retiring after 24 years in the post but will begin a new role as the first executive-in-residence of the UK Sport and Workforce Initiative later this year.

According to a copy of Barnhart’s contract that was amended Monday, Barnhart’s new position will receive an annual salary of $950,000 through Aug. 31, 2030. UK President Eli Capilouto announced Barnhart’s retirement, which will be in June, and new role in a UK Athletics press release on Tuesday. “After thoughtful discussions, I am gratified that he has agreed to stay on and write another new and exciting chapter,” Capilouto said Tuesday.

“Mitch will be the first executive-in-residence of the UK Sport and Workforce Initiative. This initiative will be part of a workforce effort that I mentioned in my remarks recently to the Board of Trustees and that I will be announcing more details about in the coming weeks.” And on the new Dean of the Law School: The incoming dean of the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law, a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky, was appointed to the post despite objections from law faculty.

On March 6, UK officials announced Provost Robert S. DiPaola had selected U.S. District Judge Greg Van Tatenhove to be dean of the law school.

But weeks earlier, UK law faculty expressed to university officials leading the search process that a “substantial majority” of their peers felt Van Tatenhove was “unacceptable” to be the school’s next dean, records reviewed by The Courier Journal show. In a February email obtained by The Courier Journal, UK law school associate deans Joshua Douglas and Beau Steenken told law faculty they had sent an email to DiPaola and others involved in the dean search informing them that a “substantial majority of the faculty expressed that Candidate D does not meet the standards of the candidate profile” the university put forward.

After Van Tatenhove was announced as the incoming dean, UK law professor Ramsi Woodcock reported possible misconduct to UK President Eli Capilouto on March 12. In the report, Woodcock claimed Van Tatenhove was “Candidate D” and that the administration’s choice to appoint him over their objections could constitute a violation of American Bar Association accreditation standards. In response to a Courier Journal open records request, the university’s official records custodian, Eric Monday, wrote Woodcock’s report “is subject to an ongoing investigation.” Who authored this august decision: Since 2002, a policy has allowed students without lawful United States citizenship or status living in Kentucky to receive in-state tuition at Kentucky colleges and universities.

On March 31, the regulation was rescinded through a consent decree after the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education agreed that the regulation conflicted with federal law enacted in 1996. The consent decree was then approved by Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove of the U.S.

District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. I do not think it’s accidental that this intervention comes a day after the state budget passed with funding for UK largely intact: Funding for Kentucky public universities will not see the cuts anticipated under the state budget approved last week. The initial executive branch budget bill delivered to Gov. Andy Beshear would have cut 1.9% in general funds for universities and the Kentucky Community and Technical College S