Energy Efficiency has big potential to create jobs, decrease electricity demand...

MACED’s second strategy brief, “Energy Efficiency,” is out today. It’s a strategy that’s been gaining steam recently across eastern Kentucky, and one that MACED has touted for years through its How$martKY and Energy Efficient Enterprises programs. Among all the strategies MACED will discuss in its strategy brief series, energy efficiency perhaps has the greatest potential right now for large impact because of its current trajectory. From the brief: Sixty-seven percent of homes in Appalachian Kentucky were built before 1990, and 25 percent are mobile homes. This creates an enormous opportunity for energy efficiency retrofits to create jobs and save ratepayers money. Studies have shown that investments in energy efficiency across all of Appalachia could create 77,000 jobs and save more than $21 billion in energy costs. This opportunity and need will continue to grow as rates rise. Amazing things are already happening in the energy sector in eastern Kentucky that have great promise: the expansion of How$martKY, utilities increasing efficiency programs, post-secondary schools across the region increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy classes. But, as MACED points out in its brief,  much more could be done to maximize the impact of energy efficiency, including investing more in energy efficiency programs to bring them to scale and passing legislation that supports energy efficiency, like the Clean Energy Opportunity Act. Eastern Kentucky has led the nation in energy production for decades, and while that era in the region is swiftly coming to an end, a new age of being an energy efficiency...

MACED releases five new strategy briefs

Thanks to the Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) initiative, there are more ideas than ever surfacing about how best to advance eastern Kentucky’s economy forward. Some of those ideas have real potential to make a lasting and broad-based impact for a high number of people. Some others are unfortunately more of the same ideas that have gotten the region nowhere over the past 50 government-initiative-filled years. The Mountain Association for Community Economic Development has decided to provide some ideas of its own. MACED will release one new strategy brief a week through October 6 at this location. There are five briefs in all, each highlighting a specific sector: Entrepreneurship, Energy, Local Foods, Forestry and Investment. Each brief will outline the current opportunities that exist for each sector. They will then discuss real and tangible ways in which each sector could be better supported by individuals and local, state and federal governments. Those five sectors in particular are key to ensuring eastern Kentucky’s economy becomes successful, sustainable and is put in a much better position to thrive well into the future. They can help us reach a brighter future in eastern Kentucky, a future aimed at an ambitious vision that rests on a set of principles that can help shape how community and economic development strategies are implemented in the region: Create good, diverse and stable jobs and income opportunities; enable meaningful public participation and broad access to benefits; protect and preserve our natural world – water, forests, land and air quality; build...

Appalachian Transition movement should employ participatory budgeting...

City governments across the country (and world) are trying a new system of budgeting that seems to be working well for them and their citizens. Participatory budgeting is a process of decision-making in which non-elected community members decide how a portion of their local government budget will be used. The process typically involves at least four steps: 1)   Community members self-identify priorities on which they think city money should be spent. 2)   Community members select which projects they want to support, and then decide which members of these subgroups will be budget delegates. These delegates work with budget experts to create specific spending proposals. 3)   Community members vote on which projects to fund. 4)   The city government implements spending for the top projects. This system of budgeting has been around for at least 25 years, when in 1989 the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, implemented the first full participatory budgeting process. Since then, it has spread into the U.S., mostly to large or medium-sized cities (Chicago, New York City, Vallejo, Calif., to list a few). So, why shouldn’t/couldn’t it spread into eastern Kentucky or any other part of Central Appalachia? In Kentucky, each county has a fiscal court and a municipal city council that have annual budgets that elected officials are in charge of dispersing for various projects. Most of the time, this system works just fine, and projects that need attention, like extending city water lines into communities far from the county seat, get the money needed to...

Real leadership for Appalachia necessary in upcoming elections...

Brace yourselves; election season is coming. We’re already seeing political ads claiming this candidate is taking us to hell in a hand basket, or that candidate is going to single-handedly save Kentucky. Unfortunately, so far there have been few candidates with any solid plans for helping eastern Kentucky. With SOAR receiving so much news coverage, I had hoped that we might get some new ideas and discussion about real, lasting economic transition. Instead, it’s just been the same rhetoric about the so-called “War on Coal,” which gets us nowhere. A recent op-ed in the Lexington Herald Leader by a former eastern Kentucky coal miner expresses some real frustration about the power coal operators have in the political process here: It’s true that I’m pretty tired of the coal corporations and coal barons telling our elected leaders what they can and cannot do. But I am absolutely sick and tired of political leaders — or candidates — who let them. We are starved for leaders who will look out for Eastern Kentucky instead of doing what the coal companies tell them. We are ready for leaders who will help us build the bright future we deserve here. There are people in every county working to develop the next economy here in Eastern Kentucky. Slowly but surely — and with precious little help from our elected leaders — we are working to create new jobs in energy efficiency, local food, shops and markets, and more. It’s hard work filled with risk...

SOAR moves forward at East Kentucky Leadership Conference

The next step in the SOAR process happened last week at the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation annual conference when the SOAR working group committees met for the first time. The 10 working group committees are tasked with “leading large-scale discussions throughout eastern Kentucky on topics related to the region‟s economic future and quality of life,” and include Agriculture, Community and Regional Foods, Leadership Development and Youth Engagement, Broadband, Business Incubation, Business Recruitment, Education and Retraining, Health, Infrastructure, Regional Collaboration and Identity, and Tourism, Natural Resources, Arts and Heritage. All group meetings are open to the public, and an undetermined number of these meetings will take place throughout the summer. Each group is made up of a 15-person committee that is supposed to determine three to five recommendations about their topic to send to the SOAR executive committee for their consideration. As it was described during the working group meetings, the executive committee will make decisions about which if these recommendations to possibly fund. These recommendations are to be in the hands of the executive committee by August of this year. There were many eastern Kentuckians at the EKLF meeting to attend the working group meetings, and we were told this was the largest EKLF meeting in many years as a result. It’s exciting and encouraging that so many are concerned enough about the future of the region to attend meetings such as these. We just hope that excitement lasts through summer as the working groups continue to meet. We also hope...

Structure and process for SOAR initiative announced – it’s a good next step...

Governor Steve Beshear and Representative Hal Rogers announced the structure and process for the Shaping Our Appalachian Region initiative yesterday in Hazard. We’ve been waiting for this announcement since Dec. 9, 2013, when an almost 2,000-person crowd showed up at the SOAR summit in Pikeville to share their ideas and suggestions about eastern Kentucky’s economic future. (Hazard Herald photo by Amelia Holliday) The announcement – covered here by the Lexington Herald-Leader and here by the Hazard Herald – said there will be a permanent SOAR office in Pikeville headed by Pikeville city manager Donovan Blackburn, and a 15-person executive committee comprised mostly of a who’s who among eastern Kentucky academia, politics, banking, law firms and business leaders, will be created. Working groups, chaired by a similar set of folks, will be devoted to 10 different topics, including agriculture, tourism, broadband Internet and education. These working groups will host community listening sessions throughout the year leading up to a second SOAR summit in November. A timeline that dictates each next step for the executive committee and working groups was also released. There are no specific dates – just what will be done in each month for the rest of this year – but it does show that a permanent SOAR executive director will be named in September after a nationwide search (Chuck Fluharty, president and CEO of the Rural Policy Research Institute, will stand in as interim director until then). A change of command from the working groups and executive committee...

SOAR Report Released: What’s Next?

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and Congressman Hal Rogers hosted a press conference, with a guest appearance from U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, earlier today to release the final report of the Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) Summit. The summit, hosted in Pikeville last month, brought together 1,700 folks concerned about the region’s future. While largely deemed a success, many – including us – wondered what would come of it. Would it just be another photo op, or would we actually see some action taken to diversify eastern Kentucky’s economy? So far, it seems like it may be the latter. On Wednesday, the Governor announced his plans to make the Mountain Parkway – a key artery from Winchester into Eastern Kentucky – four lanes for its entire length. And just a few hours ago, we learned that the Appalachian Regional Commission will get $10 million to improve broadband internet access in counties affected by the coal downturn. Both of these issues were touted as priorities from the podium at SOAR, and t’s encouraging to see movement on both those fronts.  And today, we can read the full report from the SOAR conference. It’s a lengthy read, much of which is a thorough summary of the events of the day. But at the very beginning, the authors of the report make some key recommendations for how the SOAR Initiative should proceed: While there is significant long-term work to be done, first focus on the immediate crisis of job loss. There are low-hanging fruit...

Eastern Kentucky’s high rate of political corruption must be abated before real economic change can happen...

The SOAR summit hosted on Dec. 9, 2013 by Gov. Steve Beshear and Representative Hal Rogers was a success in one very particular way: it allowed eastern Kentuckians to have an open and frank conversation about the future of the region, without vitriol or judgment, in the same space as their state legislators. It was this reality that brought about 1,500 people to Pikeville, Ky., that day, and it is that reality that compelled so many to share their thoughts and ideas about Appalachia’s economic transition. Having a voice and being given a space in which to use it is a very powerful thing, and that energy showed at the conference. But, in the days and weeks since the conference, it’s become clear that one topic of discussion was missing from much of the day: political corruption. Eastern Kentucky’s past is littered with politicians who used their position of power for the good of themselves and their close allies. The truth of this cannot be ignored. In fact, it’s likely one of the biggest factors that’s held us back. Eastern Kentucky’s rate of public-official indictments was nearly four times the rate in western Kentucky from 2002 to 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, data that was cited in November by Bill Estep. And these issues don’t just happen during election season. Take, for example, this article from the Floyd County Times about how that county’s fiscal court pushed the county further into debt by commissioning contract work for which they did not have the...