Fall is festival season in Eastern Kentucky. West Liberty has the Sorghum Festival (which sadly, I had to miss). Whitesburg has the Mountain Heritage Festival. Beattyville has the Wooly Worm Festival... and the list goes on and on. Hazard's annual festival (Black Gold) is devoted to celebrating coal. Although the bumper stickers I see driving around are a pretty good indication of the sentiments about coal in the area ("If you don't like coal, then don't use electricity" is a Perry County favorite), the festival took things to a whole 'nother level. There were T-shirts proclaiming that "I Support Coal Because Coal Supports Me," etc. And in Triangle Park in downtown, there was a huge display of very large coal mining machinery.
But there were also other things to celebrate. This year was the 100 year anniversary of the 1st train coming to Hazard. The festival consisted of an abundance of greasy food, lots of rides (which I heard enough about their un-reliability to want to stay far, far away from), and several sub-par musical performances. Unfortunately we did not get to enjoy any of the bluegrass that the state of Kentucky is known for. Instead we got to enjoy the KISS cover band and many other interesting musicians. There were some upsides to the festival- the craft fair portion of the festival was fun to walk through and we got to see some of the local artisan's products. And on Saturday morning, there was the parade. The parade was very long, and consisted of MANY pageant winners. I use the term "winners" loosely here, because there may have been 20-30 of them in the parade. I'm still perplexed as to how the pageant (that had happened prior to the festival) worked, I guess there were a lot of categories. And, since Hazard is where the idea for the Dukes of Hazzard came from, of course General Lee was in the parade! To say the least, the parade was entertaining.
So I do, without question, live in the heart of Coal Country.
What I've been hearing some about lately is the Coal Severance Tax. I'm a little hesitant to talk about it here because I don't know much about it yet. Here is an excerpt taken from maced.org:
For many years after Kentucky created a coal severance tax in 1972, almost all of the revenue was used for general state appropriations rather than specified for use in the coalfields. In 1992, the General Assembly passed legislation to apportion half of the monies back to the coal mining regions of eastern and western Kentucky. The legislation allocated a share of those dollars (15 percent of coal severance receipts) to a revenue-sharing program for local governments to provide basic services (known as the Local Government Economic Assistance Fund (LGEAF)) and a portion (35 percent of receipts) to
local funds whose use was restricted to developing industrial parks and sites (the Local Government Economic Development Fund (LGEDF)). The authors of the legislation believed industrial recruitment was key to diversifying the region’s economy as coal jobs disappear. During the 1990s, LGEDF monies built a series of regional industrial parks. After mixed success recruiting industry, the
legislature began utilizing coal severance monies for a wider range of purposes, including the following:
Educational and social programs that serve coal mining areas
The budget has funded specific programs in areas like education (the Read to Achieve program in coalfield counties; education technology in schools; the Robinson Scholars program; scholarships to the medical school at Pikeville College); health (Trover Clinic in western Kentucky); and drug abuse (Operation UNITE, the drug courts program).
Debt service on infrastructure and buildings
State budgets since 2002 have included debt for coal county capital projects, including expansion of water and sewer services and the construction and renovation of schools. The state issued bonds, and a growing share of coal severance revenue goes to paying debt service on those bonds. In the governor’s proposed budget for 2013-2014, over $30 million in coal severance revenue is reserved for debt service payments.
Local projects
In several legislative sessions, the legislature approved earmarks using monies that had built up in single-county LGEDF accounts for a variety of specific local projects, including senior centers, veterans memorials, recreation and sports facilities, tourism projects, community centers, library supplies, fire trucks and other public safety expenditures, and more.
Coal and energy-related expenses
A portion of severance tax dollars has been allocated to coal industry-related expenses and spending. For a while, $19 million a year was allocated to pay workers’ compensation liabilities for injured coal miners. Recent budgets have also included monies for a mining engineering scholarship program, mine safety enforcement, and energy-related economic development projects in coal counties.
On a level more closely related to what I'm doing in Hazard- there is a Coal Severance Grant that helps to fund the local homeless shelter, Community Ministries. As I learn more about this tax and how the money is used- I will definitely share! I'm not taking a stance on our country's use of coal as a source of energy- I'm just trying to bring up another side of the issue that many people probably don't know about.
Also I did the Run for the Hills 5K/Charity Challenge this Saturday! The weather was pretty terrible but I persevered. It was put on by the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, another topic for a future post!
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