Tag: Kentucky

5 Good Governing Mayors

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Focused on the issues most important to their constituents, mayors have to ensure public resources get used wisely and in a way that achieves results while respecting the law and democratic values.
As mayors from across the nation gather for The United States Conference of Mayors’ Annual Meeting this weekend, here are five that are practicing good governance in small and mid-sized cities.

Mayor Mick Cornett supported a one cent sales tax to fund projects that enhance the quality of life for Oklahoma City residents, such as the construction of RIVERSPORT Rapids.

Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City

Once dubbed one of the five most innovative mayors in the country by Newsweek, Cornett has been credited with helping his city shed a collective 1 million pounds through an ambitious health campaign. He’s also invested nearly $2 billion to improve schools and infrastructure and boosted civic engagement by including residents on various subcommittees. Cornett, who’s been mayor since 2004, is now the longest-serving leader among the 50 biggest cities in the U.S. and is hoping to take his changemaking ways statewide by running for governor.

Mayor Svante Myrick takes a selfie with the Child Development Council after his proclamation of Child Development Council Day in Ithaca, N.Y

Svante Myrick, Ithaca, N.Y.

First elected at age 24, Myrick – now 30 – is known for hanging an LED sign in his office that displays text messages from constituents. But more importantly, he’s tackled the heroin epidemic by proposing a detox center, methadone clinic and supervised safe injection site. “It’s a great example of good governance because although it’s experimental, there are early signs of success where it’s been done (like Vancouver, B.C.),” says Alex Torpey, former mayor of South Orange, N.J., and visiting professor of governance and technology at Seton Hall University. The idea may seem counterintuitive, but Torpey says Myrick’s team “brought in all possible stakeholders, did appropriate research and made a really brave decision to try something to help attack this problem.”

Local Louisville high school seniors discuss their post-graduation plans with Mayor Greg Fischer.

Greg Fischer, Louisville, Ky.

This Bluegrass State inventor turned businessman turned politician was elected mayor in 2010. Last year, he was voted the country’s “most innovative” mayor in a Politico survey and credited with driving the creation of a new economic development agency and an innovation office. One of his administration’s top goals includes making the city more compassionate, as well as improving education and creating “good-paying” jobs. “Throughout this tenure, the city of Louisville has moved from an old industrial town without a lot of industry to a modern creative class magnet in the Midwest,” says William Hatcher, associate professor of political science at Augusta University.

Mayor David Bieter congratulates new enlistees in the United States Navy at Boise City Hall.

David Bieter, Boise, Idaho

This fourth-term mayor – the longest in Boise’s history – has expanded access to childhood education programs and affordable housing while taking a bold stance to protect immigrants and refugees. His city does better than many others at ensuring the safety of residents and providing them access to hospital beds and certain health outcomes, helping Boise rank at the top of the America’s best-run cities study.

In Washington D.C., Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed participates in a panel discussion on the economy and job opportunities for Americans.

Kasim Reed, Atlanta

Under his leadership, the local government of this bigger city has strengthened its economy and developed urban amenities “in a manner that is effective, efficient and fair,” notes Hatcher. The second-term mayor established a bike share program to help with traffic congestion and pushed for new transit infrastructure. Recently, Reed pledged to uphold the Paris climate accord and joined the Global Parliament of Mayors, which is tackling local issues resulting from worldwide problems. “Mayors need to be at the forefront of global challenges like immigration, social mobility, climate change and resiliency,” Reed has said.
MORE: America’s Youngest Mayor

The Rural Startup That Turns Invasive Fish Into Gourmet Delicacies, the Case for Reforming Terrorists and More

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Get Rich. Save the World. Gut Fish, Bloomberg
Flashy tech solutions, artificial intelligence and all things “disruptive” have been in the spotlight for years now, but the latest presidential election has shed light on the rural areas left behind by these job-killing innovations. Now some venture capitalists are paying attention, investing in rural innovations like turning harmful fish populations into local delicacies. Industry optimists are betting on the rise of this “impact investing” to create both financial and social returns.
Can You Turn a Terrorist Back Into a Citizen? Wired
The threat of extremism looms heavily over the world today, but a fledgling program in Minnesota aims to do what some consider impossible — rehabilitate would-be terrorists back into the fold of society. The deradicalization process is painstakingly slow and delicate, but could end up both saving lives and building trust in a political climate where Muslim communities feel increasingly persecuted.
Eating Disorders Are Getting the Silicon Valley Treatment, Fast Company
More than 30 million Americans suffer from eating disorders, but the disease has long been written off as “a white girl vanity issue.” Now big players from tech and academia are stepping in to reduce stigma and foster community. The hope is that increased visibility and research will accelerate recovery for those affected and create a support network for the future.

Ex-Cons Find Support at College, Struggling Coal Country Aims to Diversify Its Economy and More

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Building a Prison-to-School Pipeline, The New Yorker
Former prisoners studying at the University of California-Berkeley have a complicated relationship with their classmates: In many ways, the previously incarcerated are more worldly, yet less scholarly, than younger students who enroll straight out of high school. That’s why ex-cons formed the Underground Scholars Initiative, a group of former inmates who help each other navigate Cal and recruit those still in the penitentiary to apply to college.

In Life After Coal, Appalachia Attempts to Reinvent Itself, Governing
In all of Eastern Kentucky, there are barely 4,000 coal mining jobs left, down from 30,000 positions just 15 years ago. Undercut by natural gas prices and tough environmental regulations, those in Appalachia are echoing one solution: diversification. This fall, Harlan County hired its first full-time economic development manager to drum up business — a major step on the way to rebuilding a functioning economy.

The Urban Playground That Builds Kids’ Brains, CityLab
On average, a wealthy child hears 30 million more words than a low-income peer. To reduce the gap, why not put words wherever kids are? Even at playgrounds. That’s the theory behind the illustrated sentences adorning the jungle gym at Officer Willie Wilkins Park in Oakland, Calif. “Let’s talk about sunshine,” “Let’s talk about food,” one can read on the playground, a helpful reminder nudging parents to talk with their children more.

This User-Friendly Tool Gets You In The Know Before You Vote

Posted on by robbie

With the presidential primary election looming, Chicago public school teacher Megan Augustiny introduced her high school civics students to BallotReady, an online guide to down-ballot races. (Think: state attorney, judgeships, city council — candidates that first-time voters in her class had never heard of, but would soon be electing to office). The nonpartisan site compiles essential information that voters need on little-known candidates — their job experience, positions on controversial issues and endorsements accrued — making it easy for students (and all voters) to “access information in the way they are used to,” she says, favoriting contenders as if their sample ballot were an Instagram feed.
Which is just what Alex Niemczewski and Aviva Rosman, two recent University of Chicago grads who co-founded BallotReady, had envisioned. Both are reserved, heads-down types who prefer to focus on their work, speaking softly about their high-minded ideals of involving more people at all stages of the democratic process. The two built the site in their spare time and spent just $180 on marketing to launch BallotReady. Within a few months, it irreversibly changed voter behavior across Illinois, where thousands of people logged on to the site. During this year’s bombastic election season, instead of skipping many of the contests, or worse, casting an uninformed vote, BallotReady users now have at their fingertips valuable information about local and regional candidates that are virtually unknown to most people.
For a glimpse of BallotReady’s reach, all one needs to do is log on to Twitter on Election Day.


In states where it’s active, BallotReady is so popular that politicians ask to add specifics to their profiles, offering new possibilities for local campaigns that are too small to attract media coverage or buy their own advertisements. If a school board member sees her opponent vows to support a charter school expansion, for instance, the incumbent may add more details to her education platform. “If a candidate says, ‘I support education,’ we don’t include that, because everybody does,” Niemczewski says. Although, “if a candidate didn’t support education, we would include that,” she adds.
BallotReady emerged from a collision of two pasts: Rosman’s as an enthusiastic electioneer and Niemczewski’s nonprofit work, as well as her knack for code. A self-avowed political junkie, Rosman started participating in the political process in middle school, driving with her dad from their native Massachusetts to New Hampshire and attempting to sway the state’s swing voters every election. In 2004, she nearly failed two high school classes when she used frequent flier miles to campaign for John Kerry in Florida. Four years later, while staffing a congressional race in Illinois, Rosman realized her knowledge was severely lacking. “I was trying to inform people about my candidate, and yet, I was unprepared to vote for all these other people on the ballot,” she remembers. Then in 2014, Rosman ran for a seat on the school council in Chicago. She asked Niemczewski, an old classmate then coaching Chicago’s unemployed into IT jobs, to vote for her. “I didn’t even know there was an election,” Niemczewski says, admitting to missing the vote. The two stayed in touch and a few months later, collaborated on the guide that developed into BallotReady.
More than 160,000 voters in Illinois, Virginia, Kentucky and Colorado have used BallotReady to inform their choices — a 10-fold growth from its launch last fall. The site is expanding its reach, developing profiles for candidates in Maryland, New Hampshire and Florida. Scaling hasn’t been easy: “It takes a lot of phone calls and relationship-building. That’s kind of daunting,” Niemczewski says, noting that 100 volunteer curators are needed to build candidate profiles, “but it’s also exciting, because it means we can really help.” By year’s end, BallotReady hopes to reach 1 million voters, and by 2020, to be in every state.
Since BallotReady is committed to educating every American citizen, it devotes resources to eliminating digital access issues that arise. Once, Niemczewski responded to a request from an elderly woman in an assisted living center. After the woman reported being unable to load BallotReady, Niemczewski troubleshot the problem by backdating the site’s functionality, so the senior citizens could use it on their outdated computers.
Ultimately, BallotReady’s founders work to make their innovative site as user-friendly as possible — to both the older electorate and young, first-time voters alike. That mission is just one of the reasons why teachers like Augustiny thinks that its online repository of candidate profiles is a great way to get Millennials more involved in elections. “The Internet is so pervasive at this point: it informs everything that we do, especially for younger people. Not having that information readily accessible online was a real disservice to young people,” she says.

As a teacher, Augustiny always wants her kids to develop in-depth research skills. But when it comes to voting — an activity that’s made so many Americans apathetic — she’s in favor of turning to BallotReady for a digital shortcut.
This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
MORE: Investing in the Future: This Visionary Program Gets Students Hooked on STEM

3 Colleges That Have the Formula for Making Higher Education Affordable

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Just about every news story reporting on this country’s college debt climate uses the same word: crisis.
It’s an accurate descriptor — or so the numbers seems to indicate. Public college tuition costs have risen 250 percent over the last 30 years, while median family income grew only 16 percent during the same period. The average student is looking at $26,000 of debt when they graduate. Even President Obama labels the situation as a crisis, as the poorest students are saddled with more and more debt.
In an effort to combat the problem, the Department of Education created the College Scorecard, which provides students and families with a new kind of ranking by taking into account graduation rates, financial aid offerings, post-grad earnings — and most importantly — average debt. On it, these three liberal arts schools stand out as valuable options for low-income students, thanks to their high graduation rates, low student loan debt and the percentage of students eligible for federal Pell grants, which are available to those whose family incomes do not exceed $30,000 a year.
In stark contrast to many other universities, each of these colleges keep their students’ loan debt at least 50 percent lower than the national average. How do they remain academically solvent while not piling debt on their graduates?

Berea students hang out between classes. Courtesy of Berea College.

Berea College, Berea, Ky.

If you’ve never heard of Berea College in Kentucky, keep reading. It’s the only residential liberal arts school in America offering a completely free education to its nearly 1,600 students.
As President Lyle Roelofs explains, “nearly everything is different.”
Like other colleges with strong financial aid programs, Berea is selective, but it isn’t need-blind. It only accepts students whose family incomes fall beneath an income ceiling, providing a higher education opportunity — as Roelofs puts it — “to students wouldn’t get one otherwise.”
Berea is a very efficient educational experience, says Roelofs. Each student works part-time while on campus, holding jobs in numerous fields, from woodworking to hotel administration, to contribute to the $27,000 to $28,000 annual price of school. “We’re never interested in whether we can send some money to shareholders at the end of the year… We are much more like an entrepreneurial business with the idea that profits and successes get ploughed back into the enterprise,” he notes. To cover costs, 75 percent of tuition is handled by the endowment the college has accrued over its lengthy history. Only 15 percent comes from loan sources, primarily Pell grants (99 percent of students qualify) and similar state grants. A third of students don’t borrow anything at all, with the remainder receiving an average of about $6,700 in loans, almost 4 times less than the national average.
Perhaps more important is Berea’s graduation rate: 64 percent of its students receive a diploma. The average graduation rate for similar-income students nationwide is a dismal 9 percent. Roelofs attributes this jump to the focus that the school puts on each student and their families.
But can every college follow the Berea model? It would take something of a paradigm shift in approach, admits Roelofs. “Institutions are usually quite preoccupied with dealing with immediate challenges; they don’t consider radical changes,” he says. Still, other colleges could consider a more frugal approach. “If you don’t charge tuition, you can make much more sensible decisions on what the students actually need,” Roelofs notes. “People don’t look the gift horse in the mouth.”
“One of my favorite sayings is that just because an education is free doesn’t mean you can cut the corners. It still has to be first rate. Otherwise, our students would finish in four years and have nowhere to go.” Which would defeat the purpose of a place like Berea entirely.

The campus at WIlliams College. Courtesy of Williams College.

Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.

Williams College, located in western Massachusetts, is tiny and idyllic. It’s also the top-ranked national liberal arts college by U.S. News & Word Report, and it is one of the 50 most expensive colleges in the U.S., with an annual price tag of around $65,000. But it has a need-blind financial aid policy, making the average loan debt just over $13,000 (about half the national average), and many of the students who qualify for financial aid (more than 50 percent are eligible) are free of loans altogether.
How does Williams do it? By maintaining a strong endowment and an individualized approach to financial aid packages, says Paul Boyer, director of financial aid at Williams.
As one of the first schools in the country to make available a net price calculator for prospective students, Williams tries to evaluate each student, case by case, to ensure it’s offering the best plan. The school also makes a concerted effort to recruit students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, seeking out lower-income applicants. About 20 percent of current students receive Pell grants, double the amount at most other liberal arts colleges — and it’s increasing. “It’s been rising maybe 1 percent per year,” says Boyer. That may not sound like much, but it’s a far cry from most other schools (including Harvard, which hasn’t been able to crack a 10 percent ceiling).
Earning an average income of $58,000 a decade after graduation, students that receive financial aid, in general, have little trouble paying back their loans. The U.S. Department of Education even ranked Williams in its top 23 schools with low costs that lead to high incomes.
 

A spring day at Amherst College. Courtesy of Amherst College.

Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.

There must be something in the water in Massachusetts: Amherst, number two in U.S. News’s liberal arts ranking, also comes with a $65,000 yearly price tag. But just like Williams, its need-blind financial aid opportunities — which 58 percent of students qualify for — minimize its real cost. In fact, what students pay, on average, is actually half of the annual sticker price: $33,000.
Amherst is strictly anti-debt. “The most distinctive thing is our approach of not including loans, as we meet students’ full demonstrated need,” says Gail Holt, Amherst’s dean of financial aid. About 70 percent of students graduate with no debt whatsoever.
That’s an achievement that Amherst should be particularly proud of, considering that college costs and incomes aren’t rising at the same level in this country. As a result, more qualify for financial aid, and resources must be distributed among a wider number of students. At Amherst, Holt and her team try to serve a full spectrum of families and financial capabilities. “The hardest part is meeting the needs of such diverse populations.” With 24 percent of students eligible for Pell grants, it seems to be making headway.
 
Fortunately, for their students, these three schools earn As in crisis management. Will other universities be able to make the grade?

Stories of Redemption in America’s Coal Country

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How much money must pour into Central Appalachia before locals will see any substantial change? The Promise Zone has already lined up $189 million, but insiders say that’s a drop in the bucket.
“Before the downturn of the coal industry, in which we lost nearly 8,000 mining jobs in the region, we were already a distressed area,” says Jeff Whitehead, executive director of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, a workforce development agency. “It’s more than just reviving an economy, it’s trying to diversify an economy that was in tough shape before this crisis.”
Not all of the hard-hit counties in Central Appalachia are part of the Promise Zone, so those that are excluded have to pursue their own economic diversification and mine restoration strategies. But as with the rest of the Promise Zone’s work, economic diversification must clear additional hurdles inherent to rural areas. And since these areas may not have the cash (or cachet) of being part of a federally recognized program, these counties must shoulder the burden of their own redevelopment.
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“We’re not in a metropolitan area where we can identify other sectors and other kinds of employment that are growing as the economy rebounds, where you can transfer over to this profession or that profession,” Whitehead adds. “This isn’t a real quick fix. There’s a level of frustration in the region because we see the dire straits that so many people are in.”
Here are three counties just outside of Southeastern Kentucky who aren’t waiting for the federal government’s assistance to create economic diversity.
For years, Knott County, Ky. — adjacent to the Promise Zone — tried to capitalize on its isolated, “backwoods” qualities to appeal to tourists wanting a rustic getaway. Its county seat, Hindman, a coal town with a population of 777, had the folksy feel, but it lacked the necessary infrastructure. As a result, an $11.8 million, state-funded plan launched by Gov. Paul Patton in 1997 aimed at generating “arts and smarts” in Hindman never resulted in the exhibitions, classes and shopping that bureaucrats envisioned — even after the investment doubled to more than $25.2 million by 2003.
“I got a call last week from a woman who asked me, ‘How do I get to you from Interstate 75?’” Corbett Mullins, former mayor of Hindman and director of the Appalachian Arts Center, told the Lexington Herald-Leader two years ago. “I paused and I said, ‘Are you sure you want to come here? To the Appalachian Artisan Center? In Hindman? Because we’re a couple of hours away from the interstate.’ And she said, ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, I meant the Kentucky Artisan Center in Berea.’ ‘That’s what I thought,’ I told her.”
Now, though, a public-private partnership is thinking regionally. Beyond a center for the arts downtown, it’s defining how to create a culture of artists that will attract visitors, part of which involves creating demand. Recreation is an early part of it, with hundreds of miles of trails in the reclaimed hillsides through the Mine Made Paradise Park, a draw that will boost sales at local shops and could even bring a hotel to town.
With hope renewed in Hindman, the initial $5 million that built the Kentucky School of Craft may prove worth the expense. The facility nearly closed down in 2012 when two instructors resigned, unwilling to spend another year in Knott County. A sculptor, Michael Flynn, has taken over and promises to expand offerings in digital media. “We are in the heart of Appalachia. When you look out our windows or walk around our campus, you are surrounded by nature, the foothills, the flow of Troublesome Creek, and wildlife right at our doorstep. The Kentucky School of Craft is iconic Eastern Kentucky, and I believe our success lies in a grassroots movement that starts with those native to the region that treasure the uniqueness of Appalachia,” Flynn says. It’s why as it “expand[s] to become a nationally recognized art organization,” Flynn won’t just be promoting their arts, he’ll be hooking artists on the unique mountain culture as well.
Upshur County, W. Va., also realized that businesses couldn’t thrive without demand, so community leaders focused on finding active buyers. Within the county, taking the word “grassroots” literally, they generated a self-sustaining local food system centered around a farmer’s market in Buckhannon. State officials point to statistics showing the boom in West Virginia agriculture: Last year, there were nearly 180 farmers markets, up from 16 in 2002. Sales at the stands accounted for nearly $4 million in 2012; that number more than doubled last year to $9 million, according to the farmers market association’s figures.
Additionally, businesses in the same industry also collaborated on marketing to generate more buyers, as the Hardwood Alliance Zone did for value-added timber products. Today, forestry and logging only accounts for 49 jobs in the county (at an average weekly wage of $568), while wood product manufacturing accounts for 483 jobs (at a higher average salary of $745).
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The city of Bristol in Washington County, Va., is located on prime real estate between two interstate exchanges. While counties deeper into rugged Appalachia concentrate on drawing tourists, this area is drafting a business plan to sell retail to those passing through, the centerpieces of which are the Believe in Bristol program to revive Main Street and construction of The Falls, a huge retail destination that could generate up to 2,000 jobs. Construction began in January on Cabela’s Outfitters, the 80,000-square-foot anchor tenant. Up next? Lowe’s Home Improvement, Smoky Mountain Brewery, Calhoun’s, Zaxby’s and Sheetz. “It’s really exciting to see walls going up and know that this fall we’ll see…more job opportunities and revenues for our city,” Mayor Catherine Brillhart tells the Bristol Herald Courier. Downtown, more retail shops, a planned hotel and the recently opened Birthplace of Country Music Museum have generated so much business that the city’s now looking at places to build a parking garage to control the overflow.
Retail development and investment in infrastructure brings hope, but it can’t fully erase the struggles that Appalachia’s citizens have endured. “It’s about solutions. [But] That doesn’t preclude me from knowing I have a sister and brother who are suffering, that I have the shortest life expectancy in the United States because I happen to be a woman in Perry County,” says Gerry Roll, executive director of the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, a local community foundation in Perry County, Ky. “I am going to fight my way out of it so that it’s not a reality when my grandchildren are my age.”
READ MORE:
Part 1: Poverty Is a Way of Life in Appalachia. But This State Proves That It Doesn’t Have to Be
Part 2: Inside The Big Plan to Get One Appalachian Community Back on Track
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Inside the Big Plan to Get One Appalachian Community Back on Track

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Middlesboro’s 10,334 residents call their home The Magic City, and something about the Kentucky town’s nickname holds true. Built within a 3.6-mile-wide basin that scientists believe was formed by a giant meteorite, Middlesboro is the first gateway to the American west. Less than a mile from the narrow Cumberland Gap, it’s where frontiersmen first crossed the Appalachian mountain range. In the 1930s, it became the first municipality west of the Atlantic Seaboard to build an electric streetcar system, earning it the moniker “Little Las Vegas”; its renowned arts and crafts, opera house and superior schools won it another sobriquet in the 1950s: “Athens of the Mountains.”
Still the largest city in Southeastern Kentucky, Middlesboro is nestled near the state lines with Tennessee and Virginia. Since the decline of the coal industry, the area’s seen a persistent outmigration due to a lack of viable jobs, losing 1.8 percent of an ever-dwindling population over the past decade. Because there are so few positions (the county’s unemployment hovers north of 9 percent), and many employees aren’t prepared for high-skilled work (one-third of residents dropped out of high school), the median household income is $24,940, putting four in 10 residents of Bell County below the poverty line. Money’s tight and commutes to work are so far that the local newspaper, The Middlesboro Daily News, publishes a sidebar listing the price of gasoline at various stations. So many people now commute to the Volunteer State (where there’s more available jobs and no property or income tax), that Middlesboro’s shopping district has shifted closer to the border to entice drivers to stop on their way out of town.
As the micropolitan center of Southeastern Kentucky’s Promise Zone, one of the first five regions selected to pilot President Barack Obama’s economic redevelopment initiative targeting areas with generations of poverty (there are now 13), Middlesboro is positioning itself for a renaissance. Local organizers say the economic downturn compounded with Central Appalachia’s coal crisis led residents to reevaluate the region’s trajectory. With official support from the federal government (although no guarantee of funding, only extra points on federal grant applications to signal that the community is in dire need of help), a multi-pronged battle is being waged on the root causes and symptoms of unemployment, lackluster education, drug addiction and poor health outcomes across eight counties.
This broad, all-hands-on-deck investment takes a slightly different approach than past redevelopment, where programs concentrated efforts on the worst cases, says Jerry Rickett, executive director of the Kentucky Highland Investment Corporation (KHIC), the lead agency coordinating the Promise Zone. “President Johnson’s War on Poverty focused on poverty. The Promise Zone focuses on the quality of life for everyone,” Rickett explains.
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Grant money is funding human capital development, including job training through Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP) and anti-drug classes like Operation UNITE in every county in Southeastern Kentucky. In Rickett’s mind, success would mean a stabilized population and a diversified economy in the region. “Our young people could choose to stay, to raise a family and not worry about denying their children the advantage of a high performing school or finding employment,” he adds.
Past initiatives led to a chicken-and-egg problem where highly skilled workers left the region for jobs in nearby urban centers, and high skill jobs feared expanding to the region for lack of skilled workers. In contrast, the Promise Zone’s highly coordinated, regional effort could provide both in tandem. Now, EKCEP is hoping that infrastructure improvements to broadband will allow residents to take full advantage of internet connectivity for their work, for instance. The group is helping entrepreneurs to promote their business online and training a select group of coal miners to become coders.
It’s tough to measure change in metrics this early (especially since many local programs existed before the initiative and are now simply growing to scale), but the Promise Zone’s backers point to some early progress. In February 2014, unemployment exceeded 15 percent in eight counties of Southeastern Kentucky. But since the Promise Zone’s inception, the rate has plummeted six points, compared to a national drop of just two percentage points. And grant funding from the federal government has done more than just interject a nice flow of cash. It’s also encouraging industries to take a second look at the region. In the next five to seven years, KHIC has identified $189 million coming into the Promise Zone.
Within the eight counties that make up Southeastern Kentucky’s Promise Zone, residents also claim they’re witnessing greater civic participation. The number of official partners has expanded from 12 to 53 during the first year alone — a collaboration that brings to mind levels of engagement not seen since the battles to unionize the mines. And for the first time in recent memory, elections are being contested, campaigns waged between the establishment and reformers. Public meetings overflow with dozens in the audience.
There are still significant challenges to providing social services in a rural area. Unlike urban redevelopment, which can hone in on a few troubled blocks (as the U.S. Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods have done successfully), rural revitalization presents the challenge of distance. The Promise Zone in Southeastern Kentucky stretches for 3,071 square miles, one and a half times the size of Delaware. It’s a two-hour drive from end to end, so it’s no surprise that the program’s coordinator, Sandi Curd, a farmer from Whitley County, says she spends most of her days in her red pickup truck.
The rigors of federal grants also create potential problems. Many are designed for dense urban areas, sometimes disqualifying a rural agency from applying. Operation UNITE, the organization fighting prescription drug abuse in the counties where the term “hillbilly heroin” was coined, couldn’t find a small cluster of blocks to target for a Department of Justice grant. “We could not get them to understand the difference between a radius in an urban area that’s 10 city blocks and what that [radius would be] in a rural area. We were turned down because they felt like we were trying to target more than one community, but really it’s that the communities are 10 miles apart,” says Debbie Trusty, Operation UNITE’s education director and a member of the Promise Zone’s health and education committee. “We reapplied after we were established as a Promise Zone and engaged with folks at the Department of Justice prior to applying. We were advised not to apply because they were afraid they weren’t able to establish different parameters.” Stumbling blocks like these have led to significant doubts about whether enough money will come in to make a difference.
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The coordinators at KHIC are quick to note that the Promise Zone is not a panacea for the region’s problems. “It’s one more tool in the toolkit,” Rickett says, readily admitting that the numbers don’t add up. “We have identified $189 million coming into the Promise Zone, but when you divide it by five to seven years and by eight counties, that’s less than 100 jobs a county, We lost 4,000 direct coal mining jobs and an estimated three indirect for every direct job,” he adds. “Will the Promise Zone fund revitalization? No, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.”
What’s different this time? Will the Promise Zone work? For Rickett, that’s asking the wrong questions. As he puts it, “It’s the only opportunity we have.”
If this last chance at redevelopment works, some might say the magic’s been in Middlesboro all along. But they’d be wrong. This isolated city in the highlands can’t be fixed by hope or superstition. It will require collaboration from the mountain men whose ancestors first cleared the frontier in search of solitude, and ingenuity from laborers who’ve toiled in the mines. And of course, it will take time.
A region devastated by a century of exploitation can’t expect a mystic transformation. That might be what it looks like when a new coffee shop opens on Main Street, the fish return to a local creek and a new family joins the congregation. But that’s not magic, that’s success.
READ MORE:
Part 1: Poverty Is a Way of Life in Appalachia. But This State Proves That It Doesn’t Have to Be
Part 3: Stories of Redemption in America’s Coal Country
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Poverty Is a Way of Life in Appalachia. But This State Proves That It Doesn’t Have to Be

Posted on by robbie

In 1973, 180 coal miners in Harlan County, Ky., stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the picket line. They had been arrested and beaten with nightsticks; their wives had lain down in front of trucks and been thrown in jail by state troopers. Repeating the struggle their fathers waged during strikes in 1931 that earned the county the moniker “Bloody Harlan,” these miners, employees of Duke Power-owned Brookside Mines, endured 13 months of fighting for the right to unionize and earn a living wage, around $45 a day.
One young miner on strike, 23-year-old Lawrence Jones, died — shot by a mine supervisor — before coal operators caved to national pressure and accepted a new union contract. Even then, victory was short-lived. Just 30 years later, there’s not a single union miner working in Harlan County; in fact, there’s no union miners left in all of Kentucky, a region of Central Appalachia once considered the heart of coal country.
The story of Central Appalachia has a recurring plot line: economic boom, devastating bust, public acknowledgement, government assistance, boom, bust….and repeat. Last May, when President Barack Obama announced the launch of Promise Zones, an economic redevelopment plan to bring federal dollars to five regions with persistent poverty, those in Kentucky (the first rural pilot) recalled programs from other commanders in chief: FDR’s Works Progress Administration, Johnson’s War on Poverty and Clinton’s Empowerment Zones. Would this redevelopment be any different? Could it finally drag the mountain region out of poverty?
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A single-industry economy in southeastern Kentucky has led to a reliance on mining at the expense of all else. Even the area’s professional class — consisting of lawyers, bankers and doctors (some who certified or denied claims for disability and Black Lung benefits) — built their businesses around mining. For low-wage workers, coal mining promised decent work, often without the need for multiple diplomas, part of the reason why eastern Kentucky has no major research institution. The land has suffered, too. As strip mining became the cheapest way to extract coal, virgin hillsides were slashed and rarely replaced, leading to erosion and floods.
But natural resources run out — or become inaccessible. In Kentucky’s case, there’s still plenty of coal underground, but it’s too costly and environmentally damaging to extract it. As the Environmental Protection Agency tightens its regulations in what some call a “War on Coal,” the state has lost 7,000 direct mining jobs since 2012. Among residents of counties bordering Harlan, it’s said there’s a month-long wait to get a U-Haul because so many people are leaving town. The rumor’s unfounded (you can get a truck tomorrow), but it speaks to the worry that neighbors are fleeing, a fear of being stuck behind since no money means no development — in infrastructure or human capital. Fourth-generation coal miners in Harlan are hanging up their helmets and moving to urban areas with better employment prospects. The county’s population fell from a height of 75,275 to its lowest since 1920, currently around 28,000.
That’s not to say everything has been stagnant in the half-century since John F. Kennedy, a young senator from New England, first drew national attention to Central Appalachia on the presidential campaign trail. There’s been “progress in reducing isolation and providing assistance” for development, says Kostas Skordas, director of regional planning and research for the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state commission created in 1965, but the pace at which improvements happen is much slower than elsewhere in the nation. “Challenges still remain. Rural areas may progress, but in many cases, metro areas are progressing faster. The gap between Appalachian communities and the rest of the country has grown larger. Education is an example of that, health is an example of that.”
Appalachia is paying the price “in providing the cheap power that built the modern American economy,” Jason Bailey, director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, tells the Associated Press. ”The region has paid it in spoiled water and degraded land and black lung disease, broken backs, torn-up roads, blasted mountains,” issues that make it harder to rebuild a diversified economy.
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A region suffering from decades of persistent poverty due to an exploitative history of resource extraction is nothing new. (There’s the Black Belt of plantations from Maryland to Texas, the Mississippi River Delta, the Texas Colonias along the Mexican border and Indian Country in the Four Corners and the Dakotas, to name a few.) And of course, long before cheap coal ran out, the Iron Belt began rusting. But one state has been working for nearly 75 years to prepare mining towns for the inevitable day when resources run dry.
Minnesota’s Iron Range Resource and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), a regional economic development agency, was founded by the state legislature in 1941 as a direct response to the one-sector economy in northeastern Minnesota falling apart during the Great Depression.
“Northeastern Minnesota has historically been largely dependent on a single industry, iron ore mining,” Mark Phillips, commissioner of IRRRB, tells NationSwell in an email. “The jobs of thousands of people and the economies of dozens of communities across the region have relied on iron ore mining and are impacted by technology or market changes within the industry.”
Iron-ore mining was once so pervasive in the region that a powdery, deep red dust blanketed entire towns — houses, cars, clothes. Today, IRRRB’s work is considered a public leader in pioneering economic diversification, land reclamation and social services like workforce development. Regional planning by the state agency enabled coordinated development, drawing federal attention and funding — bringing about long-term success that wouldn’t have been possible with isolated efforts.
That’s not to say there haven’t been missteps along the way. In the ’40s, one strategy they chose — diversifying mining operations by expanding from iron to taconite — was a booming success; agricultural experiments cultivating berries, rutabagas and potatoes, on the other hand, largely proved a bust. Eventually, timber (reviving forests that had been logged) and tourism (taking advantage of the state’s 10,000 lakes) developed as profitable sectors. Money paid for new educational facilities, focusing in particular on postsecondary vocational training.
IRRRB’s investment in human capital (something lacking in Appalachia, studies have shown) — education and workforce development — has paid off large dividends. “IRRRB programs and projects have helped existing businesses in the region remain competitive, helped attract a wide range of new jobs and companies to northeastern Minnesota,” Phillips says. Their work “increased the region’s quality of life within communities and assisted in supporting innovative educational programs in our schools and colleges.”
Kentucky’s Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat in office since 2007, and a congressman, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, an 18-term Republican, heard about Minnesota’s success. Working together on a federal-state partnership to redefine southeastern Kentucky (Shaping Our Appalachian Region or SOAR), they held a conference for roughly 2,000 people from across the rural area, remembers Gerry Roll, executive director of Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, a philanthropic community foundation. Those in attendance heard this message: “Coal is still important, it’ll be around for a while, but we need to start thinking beyond that. We need to think about new ideas, with broadband, with infrastructure, with things that will bring people to our region.”
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It became a watershed moment. “All of a sudden, everybody in the room was saying we need to do something different. We have to work together and work harder. I think there was an acknowledgment — not only from a Democrat and a Republican talking to each other, but old people and young people, environmentalists and coal miners talking to each other — that we may not agree on everything, but we need to start where we can,” Roll says. “I think the SOAR initiative gave us permission to think more broadly, outside of our usual box, and the economy was really an opportunity for us to say we’re better together. These 120 little fiefdoms that Kentucky has aren’t going to make it alone.”
The hardscrabble miners in Harlan County once proved that organizing into a union could win them major concessions from the coal mine operators. Now, a hard push for bottom-up change through Obama’s Promise Zones could once again prove the power of banding together.
READ MORE:
Part 2: The Initiative That’s Bringing Appalachia into the 21st Century
Part 3: Stories of Redemption in America’s Coal Country
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When It Comes to the College Scorecard, How Do the Final Four Schools Match Up?

Posted on by robbie

Tonight’s competitors in the NCAA championship men’s basketball game may be pretty evenly matched on the court, but they’re far apart when it comes to the cost of a college degree.
A look at Obama’s College Scorecard, an education initiative to make data on college affordability transparent, tells you that students at Duke University pay the most for a college education: $24,134 per year, whereas Michigan State offers the cheapest degree among the Final Four contenders, at an average of only $13,836 per year.
While the University of Kentucky was the tournament favorite and has twice as many championships as Duke, the school has by far the lowest graduation rate among all of the final weekend’s competitors — 57.6 percent — and the worst loan default rate — 6.2 percent of grads can’t make the payments. In contrast, 95 percent of students at the North Carolina university graduate, and only 1 percent default on loans.
Correction: An earlier version of this article reported statistics about the University of Wisconsin Colleges, not the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We apologize for the error.
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The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2014

Posted on by robbie

In a year where our country witnessed a widening gap between rich and poor, a toxic chemical leak, long delays for veterans at hospitals and clinics, botched lethal injections, racially-charged protests, record low voter turnout and stunning Congressional dysfunction, we at NationSwell turned to these ten books for stories of hope. Confronted by complex issues, these authors never flinched. Instead, they brought us creative solutions and unwavering heroics. Read on for our top ten books of 2014 (alphabetized by author):

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Are there any inspiring books we missed? Let us know in the comments below.