Loss Of Coal Extraction Tax Gutting Coal Counties - Water, Roads, Even Law Enforcement Evaporating

[hatrack]

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With counties stripped bare of their once bounteous cash flows from the coal industry, the revenue squeeze is exposing financial mismanagement, worsening a dire economic situation, and resulting in partial government shutdowns and cutbacks in core government services like infrastructure, education, and healthcare. “It’s a tough time to be in a small community that has relied for so many years on coal for its main economic driver,” said Rep. Angie Hatton, who represents Letcher County and part of Pike County in the Kentucky House of Representatives. “They’re cutting everything. We have laid off employees. Road maintenance, garbage service, water. Everything.”

Some Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia counties, for instance, lack funding to deliver drinkable water to residents. In Floyd County, Kentucky, a new school sits unused because of the lack of water pressure. Knott County, Kentucky approved a partial government shutdown in January, and county officials plan to cut a program that delivers meals to poor senior citizens as an alternative to raising taxes.

The funding problems are exacerbated by financial mismanagement. Auditors have accused administrators in Elliott and Perry County, Kentucky of mismanaging county funds in the last few years, and prosecutors charged officials in Clay, Morgan, and Union counties with corruption-related crimes.

“You can have low-level corruption and bad management, and things go along fine as long as you have coal severance money coming in to right the ship,” said Mary Cromer, a lawyer with the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center who represents the Martin County Concerned Citizens. “But we’re in the position now where the coal severance money is gone.”

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https://southerlymag.org/2019/02/27/theyre-cutting-everything-as-coal-disappears-appalachians-lose-access-to-basic-services/

[Squinch]

1. When are these guys going to face the fact that its over. They heyday of coal

is not coming back. They need to find a new industry.

I feel for the people but I'm growing tired of hearing, a generation in, how sad it is that their livelihoods have disappeared. These places have been wallowing in abject poverty for decades waiting for someone to revive coal. Because somehow the coal industry is more special than car production or steel or buggywhips or whaling.

Hillary had the solution for them. A practical plan to move renewable energy industries into the coal and rust belts.

They didnt want that.

[AJT]

2. One reason they don't care about 45 being a corrupt, lying, incompetent thug:

"You can have low-level corruption and bad management, and things go along fine as long as you have coal severance money coming in to right the ship."

They expect it.