More than 600 businesses and organizations combined to spend $9.1 million on lobbyists attempting to persuade executive branch officials in Kentucky in the previous fiscal year, according to reports filed with the Executive Branch Ethics Commission.
This spending total on lobbyists in the period from July 1 last year to June 30 this past summer is just shy of the record set in the previous fiscal year.
Kentucky has long required groups to report their spending on legislative lobbyists, but first required reports on executive branch lobbying spending in 2020. This push for increased transparency followed the conviction of a former cabinet secretary and lobbyist for orchestrating a kickback scheme to steer large government contracts to clients.
The top spender on executive branch lobbyists in the last fiscal year was Ernst & Young, one of the largest accounting firms in the country. The company reported spending $115,748 on lobbyists, which was slightly less than what it spent the previous fiscal year, when Ernst & Young placed second among spenders in Kentucky, behind Jefferson County Public Schools.
Ernst & Young is one of several companies among the top lobbying spenders to also have contracts to provide services for state government agencies.
Since spending on executive branch lobbying was first required to be reported in 2020, its totals have been well below what’s been reported by organizations lobbying the Kentucky General Assembly. For example, groups reported spending $8.7 million lobbying the legislature in just the three-month period of the 2025 session, and $28.1 million in all of 2024.
One factor in the smaller totals is that groups are only required to report their payments to lobbyists in filings with the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, while legislative lobbying reports must include other expenses like advertising, polling, consultants and hosting conferences and events.
For example, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce barely placed in the top 20 of executive lobbying spenders in the last fiscal year with $51,113 spent on lobbyists, but their report also volunteered that it spent more than $245,000 on sponsorships of dozens of events where officials were lobbied.
The business advocacy group’s latest filing also highlights the differences between organizations on how thoroughly they report their lobbying efforts. Groups are required to list “the specific agency decisions you sought to influence,” which some take more seriously than others.
The chamber provided extensive documentation of each time a specific lobbyist met with a specific executive branch official and the topic of their discussion. In contrast, Sazerac — a large spirits company that spent $55,199 on lobbyists — only stated in one sentence that it lobbied on “matters related to alcohol, the regulation of alcohol and economic development.”
Here’s a rundown of some of the top lobbying spenders seeking to influence executive branch policy in the last fiscal year, the agency decisions they sought to influence and the new presence of marijuana companies attempting to lobby on rules for Kentucky’s new medical cannabis program.
Major government contractors among top lobbying spenders
Ernst & Young was one of several top spenders on executive branch lobbyists that have landed large government contracts in recent years.
The accounting firm’s report stated that its seven paid lobbyists discussed issues related to health care, procurement and unemployment insurance, as well as “promotion of EY products and services to government agencies for procurement opportunities.”
According to state spending and contract records, Ernst & Young has several current contracts with the state, including a two-year contract signed with the state for $492,500 last summer to study higher education and the need for a new four-year college in eastern Kentucky. The accounting firm received $127,347 of state funds in the last fiscal year, and $380,968 from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services since July in the current fiscal year.
Ernst & Young landed contracts in 2020 worth $17 million to help the administration of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear process unemployment claims amid the pandemic, but subsequently dropped off from receiving state funds until the last fiscal year.
Placing second in lobbying spending was telecommunication giant AT&T, which spent $107,845 on eight lobbyists. The company reported lobbying the Kentucky Public Service Commission on pole attachments, as well as the governor’s office, Transportation Cabinet, Office of Broadband Development and Commonwealth Office of Technology on other issues.
AT&T — which has placed among the top four executive lobbying spenders in each of the last six years — received $22.7 million of state spending in the last fiscal year, and nearly $6 million in the current fiscal year.
Another major government contractor to place among the top 10 executive lobbying spenders is Gainwell Technologies, which helps process and administer Medicaid claims for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Gainwell spent $60,000 on lobbyists in the last fiscal year, when it also landed a six-year, $33 million contract to process all prior authorization Medicaid service requests for the cabinet. In previous years it also signed long-term contracts worth more than $200 million.
Gainwell received $60 million from the state in the 2024 fiscal year, $30 million in the last fiscal year and $16.2 in the current fiscal year, all from the Medicaid department of CHFS.
Deloitte, a national consulting firm, placed 18th in lobbying spending last year with $53,250. The company won a $55 million contract last year to replace Kentucky’s outdated unemployment insurance system. Deloitte also received $114 million in state spending in the last fiscal year and $41 million since July, mostly from CHFS.
Health-related groups were top lobbying industry
Nearly a quarter of all executive lobbying spending in the last fiscal year came from companies or groups in a health-related field, from care, to advocacy, to insurance.
Liberty Dental Plan placed fourth in spending with $72,000 on lobbyists, who reported communicating with the Department of Insurance on licensing, regulations and compliance for dental insurance.
At seventh in lobbying spending was Groups Recover Together, which runs 11 outpatient clinics in Kentucky serving people with substance abuse disorders, offering counseling and medication-assisted treatment. The company identified two lobbyists who met with the governor’s office and Medicaid officials “regarding issues related to substance abuse treatment.”
This was the first fiscal year where the top 10 executive lobbying spenders did not include one of Kentucky’s Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs), which receive roughly $14 billion annually to handle beneficiaries’ health care benefits and claims.
Anthem, now known as Elevance Health, is typically among the top spenders, but had its MCO contract dropped at the beginning of this year. It only spent $13,000 on executive lobbyists in the last fiscal year, after spending $82,000 in the previous year.
Humana was the largest lobbying spender among the five current Medicaid MCOs, spending $54,000 on lobbyists who reported meeting with the governor’s office and CHFS on a detailed list of issues related to Medicare, Medicaid and managed care.
Medical cannabis companies join the lobbying fray
New players to report executive branch lobbying spending this year are several in the marijuana industry that plan to — or hoped to — do business in Kentucky with its new medical cannabis program.
Illinois-based Cresco Labs reported spending $31,410 on lobbyists in the last fiscal year, stating in one sentence that they sought to influence “matters related to medical cannabis and licensing.”
Cresco Labs has an agreement in place to at least operate a large cultivation facility in Winchester, which is licensed to a company owned by Cresco CEO Charlie Bachtell. The owners of a processor license and dispensary license are also tied to Cresco, as they include its current board member and former chief operating officer.
The Beshear administration has faced criticism over its handling of medical cannabis licensing, ranging from hemp farmers to the Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball, whose office is now investigating how licenses were awarded and administered.
Critics have alleged out-of-state companies were allowed to rig the licensing lottery by flooding the state with expensive applications. They’ve also alleged the administration has allowed companies to circumvent a prohibition against “vertical integration” — a company holding licenses in more than one of the three categories of cultivator, processor and dispensary — by setting up service agreements with licensees tied to those same companies.
Much of this criticism was focused on Arkansas-based Dark Horse Cannabis, a cannabis company whose CFO Sean Clarkson created 350 new companies in Kentucky just ahead of the application deadline. These companies then collectively submitted roughly the same number of applications, at a cost of more than $2.5 million, winning four dispensary licenses, one processor license and the largest tier cultivator license.
Despite an investor pitch deck indicating it intended to operate vertically in Kentucky, Dark Horse executives have said the company doesn’t own any licenses. Instead, they say that Gold Leaf Management — which has the same CEO and CFO as Dark Horse Cannabis — will operate under management services agreements with licensees.
Gold Leaf Management is one of the new companies that lobbied Kentucky’s executive branch in the last fiscal year, reporting nearly $10,000 spent on lobbyists. In a peculiar twist, the company’s filing did not indicate that it lobbied on medical cannabis, but instead a variety of issues related to electric transmission and regional power grids.
Also reporting lobbying spending was the Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance, a new advocacy group for the medical cannabis industry. The organization is run by former Democratic state Rep. Rachel Roberts and its board chair is Clarkson of Dark Horse and Gold Leaf. Its board also includes two attorneys who’ve worked for Dark Horse and a Cresco executive.
Also spending $30,000 on lobbyists in the last fiscal year was SLG Ventures, an Arizona-based cannabis company that filed six dispensary license applications in Kentucky last year, but came up empty in the lottery. DIZPOT, a cannabis packaging company that is also based in Arizona, reported spending $12,500 on lobbyists. DIZPOT does not own a medical cannabis license in Kentucky, but was a sponsor at a recent Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance conference this fall.
Medical cannabis became legal in Kentucky at the beginning of 2025, but is still not available for eligible patients at dispensaries, as cultivator licensees have been slow to get their growing facilities up and running.
