When Comair 5191 motored off the end of a far too short (and unlit) general aviation runway 26 at Blue Grass Kentucky (LEX) on 27 Aug 06, the controller who'd cleared the CRJ for takeoff on the main runway was busy with other duties and had his back turned. The other controller who should have been manning the shift was absent under the auspices of an FAA manning plan that had shut its eyes to phantom manning practices. The rules against those practices were never a policy in writing however, so they were widely disregarded. Executives at the airport had tried to crank up a plan that would have seen the Regional Radar Center in Indianapolis take over approach control duties and relieve the overnight sole controller of some of his workload. However that plan foundered on practicality grounds. Local approach control (with the emphasis on "local" and not remotely distant) is required for proper management of airspace below 10,000ft - under the FAA's rules. In fact LEX manning had long been in direct violation of federal requirements prohibiting a single controller from performing approach control and ground duties simultaneously. Apart from a manning shortfall, the $135,000 in overtime that would have been required to fully staff the overnight shift far exceeded the LEX facility's $17,000 overtime budget. Part of the problem was "that the FAA's guidance, because it was communicated orally, was misinterpreted and inconsistently applied. Since the Comair accident, FAA has formalized the verbal guidance into a written order which was, in our opinion, an appropriate and necessary action," according to a March report by the Dept of Transport Inspector General. Rep. Ben Chandler, D-6th District, is quite unhappy over recent revelations by air traffic controllers at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport that they are working 17 times more overtime now than before last year's Comair crash. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's aviation subcommittee is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Wednesday 6th June to discuss how much progress has been made, or not made, on the National Transportation Safety Board's most-wanted air safety improvements.