Sunday, Dec. 31, 2006

A year later, Sago Mine families say safety problems still need solving

A year ago Wednesday, 12 West Virginia coal miners died in one of the nation's biggest mine disasters in recent years. Families of the victims told Tara Tuckwiller of the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail that "serious, deep-seated problems with mine safety . . . are being brushed aside by state investigators’ theories about lightning igniting the explosion." The problems include availability of rescue teams, emergency air supplies and what the families say is a code of secrecy in the largely non-union coal industry.

"Nobody alerted rescue crews for more than an hour and a half after the explosion. It took rescuers another two and a half hours to get there. Officials wouldn’t let them into the mine for another six and a half hours," Tuckwiller writes, "saying it was too dangerous. Federal mine safety regulators now say coal companies must report accidents to emergency authorities within 15 minutes. ... But rescue teams still have to travel to a disaster. Congress ordered companies to provide more rescue teams, but federal regulators don’t have to implement that until the end of next year."

"In other countries, underground emergency shelters keep miners alive until rescuers can reach them. But Congress is waiting on a federal study before it will decide whether to force mines to buy them. It, too, isn’t due until the end of next year," Tuckwiller continues. "Rules now require more emergency oxygen, but miners do not have it. Coal companies say they can’t get the additional air packs right now, because two suppliers are backordered. The Sunday Gazette-Mail reported last week that a third supplier has thousands of air packs sitting in a warehouse." The packs are bulkier than those of the top two suppliers.

Families say an underlying problem in making coal mines safe is the industry's code of secrecy. "They said coal miners feel afraid to criticize any company for fear they will be blackballed and never get another mining job anywhere. They said inspector friends have told them they’ve gotten their wrists slapped by their bosses for doing their jobs, citing mines’ safety violations in certain instances. Families said they have tried to explain this to lawmakers, but lawmakers won’t bring it up publicly either." (Read more)

C-J brings more focus to debate over mountaintop-removal coal mining

The debate over mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia often devolves into a shouting contest, and news coverage of the complex subject often focuses on the debate and not the underlying facts. The Courier-Journal's Forum section goes beyond the usual today, with a 1,950-word article by Stan Macdonald, the Louisville newspaper's retired special-projects editor and investigative reporter. Newspapers that want to explain the details of the issue could get The C-J's permission to reprint the article. Photo shows the Rev. John Rausch, a foe of mountaintop removal, at a reclaimed mine.

One linchpin for the story is a federal study that didn't lead to more restrictions on mountaintop removal but pointed out the importance of ephemeral streams -- those than come and go, depending on rainfall and runoff. Coal executives such as Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, call those "dry ditches" that can eventually be replicated by required reclamation, but scientists disagree.

"Denis Newbold of the Stroud Water Research Center in Pennsylvania and J. Bruce Wallace at the University of Georgia say headwaters are vital partly because they collect organic matter from their intimate relationship to surrounding forests and transport it downstream, where it serves as food for fish and other aquatic life," Macdonald writes."These streams, which supply over 50 percent of the water in rivers, also help remove pollutants, including excess amounts of nitrogen, that otherwise would reach the rivers downstream, Newbold said." He told Macdonald, ""If you destroy two or three headwater streams, nobody will know the difference," he said. "But when you start destroying large numbers of them, then the impacts will be felt downstream."

Another study, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2003, found "worrisome levels of selenium in fish in West Virginia streams below valley fills," which are made of material blasted from strip-mine sites and placed in the heads of hollows. "Coal mining can release selenium, which is naturally occurring, and excessive amounts are toxic to fish and fish-eating birds. Prompted by the discovery in West Virginia, Kentucky is just starting a study of selenium in its eastern streams," Macdonald writes.

Macdonald offers much more data, such as: The Army Corps of Engineers has permitted more than 180 valley fills in southeastern Kentucky in the last five years. "If all these fills are constructed, corps records show that almost 50 miles of streams would be permanently buried by leftover mining debris, and about 30 more miles would be subject to what the corps considers to be temporary disruptions," such as "in-stream sediment ponds that are supposed to be removed during the required reclamation." (Read more)

Mountain Eagle publishers celebrating 50th anniversary of their purchase

On New Year's Day, Tom and Pat Gish will have published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for 50 years. They "have survived floods, death threats, arson and theft. They've covered poverty, corruption and mining disasters. And when they weren't hunched over typewriters and printing presses, they fought for the First Amendment," reports Samira Jafari of The Associated Press.

"These people have demonstrated more tenacity than almost any crusading rural newspaper in the country," Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, told Jafari. "Fifty years is a long time to ride a white horse." Photo shows the Gishes at the 2004 announcement that the Institute was establishing the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism. They were the first recipients. The next award will be given in April at the National Summit on Journalism in Rural America in Lexington, Ky. Click here for an article adapted from a tribute to the Gishes when they got the first award.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the weekly Eagle published "scores of stories that attracted national attention to Appalachia, serving as an impetus for the War on Poverty and the 1977 Surface Mining and Reclamation Act. They covered the lack of health care in the hills, the dilapidated schools, jobs lost to the mechanization of the coal industry and dangerous mining conditions," Jafari writes. "And in an unusual move for most rural weeklies, they followed stories that took them beyond the county line. Cross cited The Mountain Eagle's stories that held the Tennessee Valley Authority -- established as a federal natural-resource agency -- responsible for encouraging large-scale strip mining without adequate reclamation."

Jafari notes that the Gishes have won several national journalism awards. Mimi Pickering, an Appalshop filmmaker who is doing a documentary about the Gishes, told the AP reporter, "I think they've set the standard for what high-quality journalism should be, whether it's in a small town or big city." (Read more)

Friday, Dec. 29, 2006

Interstate system is showing its age at 50, and needs money for a fixup

The interstate highway system "is imperiled by crumbling concrete, decaying steel, insufficient lanes and overstuffed traffic – and federal and state gas tax receipts can’t keep up with the cost of the needed improvements," reported Matt Milner, a fellow in the Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. News Service Elite Reporting Program.

"Millions of more cars and far heavier freight-hauling trucks are pounding away at the aging system than engineers anticipated," Milner wrote, and the U.S. Department of Transportation reports that "more than one-fourth of the interstate highways, bridges and beltways in America are badly in need of immediate repair, upgrade or expansion." The agency's Federal Highway Administration says commercial trucks cause 40 percent of the damage, but the American Trucking Associations "argue that interstate highways need to be rebuilt and repaved to carry more volume." The Bush administration opposes higher fuel taxes, but supports letting states lease "high-volume roads to private companies that then charge tolls to pay for improvements and also make a profit," as Indiana, Illinois, Virginia and Texas have done.

"Tom Lewis, author of a book on how the interstate system transformed everyday life in America, said too many transportation experts and motorists took the highway network for granted as the nation’s population shifted from rural to urban regions," Milner reported. “Now we’ve got this wonderful legacy that’s going to hell,” Lewis told Milner. “We’re celebrating a skeleton on this 50th anniversary year.” (Read more)

Milner also did a story on how the interstate system shaped the nation, helping towns along the new roads and hurting those that weren't. "Hundreds of small, rural communities that popped up across America in the 19th century when the railroads ran through them but then found themselves far off the interstate path," he wrote. "For a public addicted to motor travel, the socioeconomic consequence has meant urban sprawl, overcrowded highways, road rage, lost productivity and wasted fuel." (Read more)

Database spurs stories on subsidies as debate begins on new Farm Bill

With the new farm-subsidy database from the Environmental Working Group, more detailed information available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and debate over the new Farm Bill ratcheting up, now is the best time ever to do stories about agricultural subsidies in your area -- and how they are viewed by various interests and those who represent you in Congress.

One recent example: NebraskaStatePaper.com did a few keystrokes on the EWG Web site and found that the 3rd Congressional District of Nebraska "was first among the nation’s congressional districts in farm subsidy dollars for 2005 with a staggering $991.5 million." That line was followed by a link to the EWG page giving the individual subsidy recipients in Nebraska in 2005, ranked by amount.

The site gives data going back to 1995, and the State Paper mined that, too, reporting that : "35 percent of all farmers and ranchers do not collect government subsidy payments in Nebraska," that 10 percent of the farmers collected 58 percent of the subsidies in the last 11 years, and "Recipients in the top 10 percent averaged $45,117 in annual payments between 1995 and 2005. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients saw only $2,066 on average per year." (Read more)

The story also added new state-by-state data from USDA on organic farming and picked up a story from the Grand Island Independent about Nebraska leading the nation in red-meat production.

The Washington Post has done the best job we've seen lately at examining farm subsidies and the Farm Bill debate. For the latest Post story, with links to other articles, click here. (Also see Dec. 24 blog item.) For the Society of Environmental Journalists' take on the issue, click here. CattleNetwork.com reports, "The Bush administration says major reform is needed for government farm subsidies, setting the stage for confrontation with those seeking to prolong the status quo . . . There is just too much international pressure to reform, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials say, to leave in place subsidies that may violate World Trade Organization rules." (Read more)

Dutch bank, rebuffed in Farm Credit bid two years ago, sets stake in U.S.

Rabobank Group, the Dutch bank that tried to buy part of the government-backed Farm Credit System two years ago, "has quietly built a force of 30 loan officers in Nebraska and Iowa," reports Steve Jordon of the Omaha World-Herald. Its corporate lenders seek out large agribusinesses [and] its California bank is equipping some Midlands farmsteads with electronic banking devices."

The company is also shopping for "an attractive farm-oriented bank ... in the agriculture-rich region that stretches from Texas to the Dakotas," Jordon writes. "Every banker wants to do business with Midwestern farmers," Cor Broekhuyse, the bank's head of U.S. operations, told Jordon. "They're very good operators. They have nice balance sheets. In the long term, we believe in agriculture in the Midwest."

In 2004 Rabobank tried to buy Omaha-based Farm Credit Services of America, which serves Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota and Iowa. The bid "collapsed amid opposition within the Farm Credit System that caused delays and ruined the sale's chances," the World-Herald reports. (Read more)

Md. newspaper war: Establishment vs. the opinionated vs. the Post

There's a newspaper war "in the unlikeliest of places: rural St. Mary's County in Southern Maryland," where the Potomac and Patuxent rivers empty into Chesapeake Bay (see Dec. 27 map below), reports Megan Greenwell of The Washington Post. The County Times, "a softer, kinder paper, has just joined an occasionally salacious local tabloid," St. Mary's Today, and the Enterprise, a biweekly published by the Washington Post Co. The Post also circulates its Southern Maryland Extra in the county of 98,000.

The new paper is owned by James McKay, 87, "the patriarch of one of St. Mary's most prominent political families, [who] got sick of being mercilessly mocked by the tabloid," owned by Kenneth Rossignol. "Rossignol had no experience in journalism when he started the paper in 1989, but he takes accountability and entertainment as equally important tenets of what a newspaper should be," Greenwell writes. "He said he sees no need for a division between news and opinion in the pages of his tabloid, a philosophy that feeds a constant stream of attacks on local political figures . . . " Zach Messitte, a political scientist at St. Mary's College, told Greenwell: "There are things that are said in its pages that don't seem to serve any civic purpose except to be mean. And sometimes that has a chilling effect on civic life."

Rossignol took a jab at the Post Co., telling Greenwell he hopes his competition is successful. "It's independent and locally owned, and we'd love some real competition on the juicy stories," he said. The new paper "mails 10,000 free copies of the newspaper to subscribers every week" and hopes to have "12,000 paying customers for a twice-weekly edition in the next two years," Greenwell reports.

Meanwhile, St. Mary's County is certainly getting covered. "As many as five reporters have been known to attend the same routine county commission meeting," Greenwell writes. "The length of the sheriff's press contact list rivals that of Montgomery County, which is 10 times the county's size." (Read more)

Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006

Medicare drug program is Wal-Marting rural pharmacies, CBS says

"What Wal-Mart once did to rural downtowns, Medicare is doing to the rural drug store." That was how CBS correspondent Wyatt Andrews summed up his report last night on how the new Medicare Part D program for prescription drugs is hurting the small, independent pharmacies prevalent in rural areas -- a story to which The Rural Blog has been calling attention for months.

"My life's earnings have gone right out the window," said Columbus, Miss., pharmacist Don Walden, the focus of Andrews' report. "Walden says the problem is that seniors get Medicare coverage through private insurance companies, which in turn, have lowered the fees and reimbursements they pay him." (Photo of Walden in his Medical Arts Pharmacy from CBSNews.com.)

Walden is resisting chain pharmacies' offers to buy his store, but Andrews lists several that have gone out of business: "Gone this year is the old Taylor Drug Store in tiny Granville, Ohio. There is no more Centennial Merit Drugs in Monte Vista, Colo. When Randy Spainhour closed down Penslow's pharmacy in Holly Ridge, N.C., he mailed his license back blaming, the 'low reimbursement of Medicare'."

The Rural Blog reported Aug. 24 that a survey of more than 500 community pharmacists revealed that nearly nine out of 10 (89 percent) are getting less money and a third are considering shutting down since Part D started last Jan. 1. "The survey found that more than half (55 percent) of respondents said they have had to obtain outside loans or financing to supplement their pharmacy’s cash flow because of slow reimbursement by health care plans," according to the National Community Pharmacists Association.

A May 8 item in The Rural Blog referenced a study that shows rural residents are paying more for drugs than urbanites under Medicare Part D prescription drug plan. The study by the Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis of the Rural Policy Research Institute reported that average monthly premiums for Medicare Advantage prescription drug plans vary from $6 in urban New Hampshire to $53 in rural Hawaii. Click here for the archived item and click here for the study.

The Economist takes a look at rural economic development

The Economist, the British magazine that likes to write about solutions as well as problems, tackled the subject of economic vitality in American small towns in its Dec. 19 edition. As many such pieces do, it painted the problems with too broad a brush, but offered a good sample of some new approaches, the obstacles that stand in their way and organizations that try to help rural places implement solutions.

“There's usually a lot of skepticism that another approach can really make a difference,” said Doug Loescher, director of National Trust Main Street Centre, which tries to preserve historic buildings through state and local branches. “Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, says it is expensive to provide small business development services in rural America, even if there is a good return on investment. Rather appealingly, he proposes that the federal government shave 5 percent off its enormous farm-subsidy program — which goes mostly to mega-farms — and give it to small businesses.” Hassebrook told The Economist that his prescription would “quadruple what the federal government spends on entrepreneurial rural development.” Hassebrook also suggests philanthropy. “Rural communities are not going to be rescued by large corporations setting up large factories,” he says, but could get help from “local boys who have made good in Chicago or Omaha.”

The magazine concludes: “Two promising themes for revival emerge. First, art. There is money in painting and plays. . . . The town of Nelsonville, in southern Ohio, has become an 'artists' Mecca' in recent years, according to Will Lambe, a research associate at the University of North Carolina, who is working on a book about small-town economic development.” The article also cites the "Swamp Gravy" storytelling festival in Colquitt, Ga., and the bed-and-breakfast entrepreneurship of Salado, Tex. “A second theme is alternative energy. Across the emptying Great Plains, towns are praying that sun, wind and plant matter will stop them from withering away.” Lambe told The Economist (which doesn't use bylines), “Everybody I talk to is trying to get on this bandwagon of biodiesel and ethanol and wind.” (Read more)

New rural sales pitch: Put your office outside D.C. nuclear blast zone

Some federal agencies are moving their offices into rural Virginia at least in part because of the threat of a nuclear attack on Washington by terrorists. Winchester, Va., 75 miles west of the capital, is advertising itself as just outside the "blast zone" of a nuclear blast but is "still close enough so that employees can get to the District relatively easily when they need to," The Washington Post reports. (Post map by Laris Karklis)

Winchester is on Interstate 81 in the Shenandoah Valley, the favorite spot for relocations. "Federal officials argue that the valley is not only more secure, it's preferable for planning and budget reasons. The cost of land and labor are lower in the valley, and with workers moving into the fringes of Northern Virginia and even West Virginia in search of affordable homes, moving operations to a place such as Winchester could mean shorter commutes for many. That, in turn, could mean lower turnover and a more productive workforce," Alec MacGillis writes. "Leading the shift is the FBI, which chose Winchester over other towns of similar distance from the District as the site for a big centralized archive that by 2009 will employ at least 1,200 people, many of them now working in Washington and Baltimore."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is moving 700 employees to Winchester. "Local officials say this would include positions moved from Mount Weather, the government's hilltop emergency center on the border of Loudoun and Clarke counties, so that that facility could be devoted to national security instead of natural disasters. Real estate brokers working in Winchester say that FEMA is looking for additional space for its accounting department and that the Department of Homeland Security is looking for space around Harrisonburg, farther south along I-81. Activity is also picking up north along the corridor. Outside Martinsburg, W.Va., the Coast Guard is building a new National Maritime Center, a 200-person office now in Arlington. (Read more)

Eagle coming off endangered list; polar bear may go on threatened list

"Seven years after the U.S. government moved to take the bald eagle off the endangered species list, the Bush administration intends to complete the step by February, prodded by a frustrated libertarian property owner in Minnesota," writes Peter Slevin of the Chicago bureau of The Washington Post. "By February 16, the bald eagle will be delisted," said Marshall Jones, deputy director of the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

"The delisting, supported by mainstream environmental groups, would represent a formal declaration that the eagle population has sufficiently rebounded, increasing more than 15-fold since its 1963 nadir to more than 7,000 nesting pairs," Slevin writes. As few as 417 nesting pairs were found in 1963. (Photo by Paul Davis of the Daily American Republic of Poplar Bluff, Mo., via The Associated Press)

The government had to act by Feb. 16, or explain why it was not acting, under an order from a federal judge in a lawsuit filed by Minnesota property owner Edmund Contoski, who wanted to develop property near an eagle nest. But the Fish & Wildlife Service is drafting new rules to protect eagles.

"What we're trying to work toward is ensuring, if the bald eagle is taken off the list, people won't see that much of a change," Chris Tollefson, chief spokesman for the service, told the Post, which reported, "Rules are being polished, for example, to define activities permitted near eagle habitats and what can be done near nests that eagles are not using. A debate has been underway over what it means to "disturb" an eagle, a crucial but imprecise word in the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act." (Read more)

Meanwhile, the Post's Juliet Eilperin reports, "The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence."

(Associated Press photo by Jonathan Hayward)

Wisconsin farms and rural life changing; academy and paper take a look

Dairy farms in Wisconsin are getting bigger to complete with those in the West. "Organic farming also continues to grow, carving out an increasingly important niche. Small towns, too, are angling to restore Main Street shopping districts, lure entrepreneurs and create jobs. And alternative energy, such as ethanol and biomass, is beginning to make inroads in the state."

Those lines sum up a four-part series in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about rural life in Wisconsin, which calls itself "America's Dairyland" and is 30 percent rural. "For the past year, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters has pulled together farmers, business executives, academics and politicians to examine the future of farming and rural life in the state. The group is due to issue a report before the middle of next year. Depending on the recommendations and the political reaction, the report could either provide a blueprint to the future or gather dust. But for Wisconsin's farms and rural communities, the future is now," Bill Glauber wrote in the opening installment of the series.

Tracy Porter, a designer of home décor, fashion and jewelry in Princeton, Wis., population 1,500, told the paper, "People ask me, 'How do you run a national company from a small town?' I tell them, 'How do you run a national company from San Francisco? How do you afford the costs?'" The paper added, "And here's the other thing about running a rural business: You can live upstairs. That's what a lot of the entrepreneurs do in Princeton." (Read more)

Schools and health insurance were the two leading concerns voiced by citizens at public forums over six months. For Glauber's story on that, click here. To read his story on the growth of organic farming in Wisconsin, click here. For Raquel Rutledge's story on the ethanol boom in the state, click here. UPDATE: To grasp the competition Wisconsin faces from the West, read this story from the Fresno Bee about Tulare County supervisors approving a dairy with 12,000 cows!

Idaho county produces guidebook to rural living for newcomers

"To help newcomers adjust to the unique nature of rural living, Madison County Commissioners voted last week to pay for a new book, one that will help Utahans, Californians and others adjust to the slow country pace of southeastern Idaho," The Associated Press reports from The Rexburg Standard-Journal.

"Newcomers will receive a copy of the code when they arrive at the County Planning and Zoning Office," AP reports. "It isn't an ordinance, it's a guideline," commission Chairman Roger Muir told the newspaper. "Commissioner Robert Hansen said a similar booklet helped lifelong community members and newcomers adjust to growth in Madison County, Montana," AP reports. (Read more)

"The commissioners said they noticed some frustration from new residents over some of the hardships of rural life familiar to farmers and lifelong rural residents," AP reports. "The code is necessary to inform transplants from metropolitan areas that living in the country requires an acceptance of the lack of amenities like paved roads, quick responses from fire departments and cell phone service. The guide also warns newcomers that there are some necessary nuisances of rural living, such as farmers baling through the night during harvest season and burning their fields. The booklet also provides details on roads, utilities, property issues, emergency services, the impact of nature and weather and agricultural and public land issues."

Sunday, Dec. 24, 2006

When ignorance begets fear, rural news media need to shed light

When Rep.-elect Keith Elliston, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress, said he would use a Quran for his ceremonial oath, Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., wrote constituents, "I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."

Goode has Muslim constituents, and they want an apology. “This is a country of immigrants,” Sarwat Ata, chairman of the Danville Masjid Islamic Center, told Bernard Baker of the Danville Register & Bee. "Ata said he voted for Goode in the November election," Barker reports. "Ata said Goode should sit down with local Muslims and learn more about them if he won’t apologize. Ata said Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding. They want to be free and share many of the values Goode supports, such as the Ten Commandments, he said." Goode not only refused to apologize, but repeated his words for local TV.

Baker quoted a Danville resident calling Goode's letter an embarassment, but Brian Todd of CNN reports that in Goode's home town of Rocky Mount, "Nearly everyone we spoke with stands by Virgil Goode. Does that make them racist? Not neccesarily, but their comments reflect the gray areas of race, religion and demographics in small-town America." Todd followed that with interviews of the misinformed and the uninformed at a Rocky Mount restaurant. "I'm not against the Muslim faith," a man said, "but I'm against him forcing his rules, his opinion, upon us." A woman said everyone who takes the congressional oath should use the King James Version of the Bible. You have to wonder if those folks know that last winter, a Muslim cleric from Roanoke, next to Goode's district, gave the invocation in the state House. (View story)

In Danville, The Register & Bee published an editorial that made more sense. The newspaper called Goode's remarks "mean-spirited . . . because in the 5th District, Muslims are an easy group for him to pick on. Their numbers are small and their influence is nil." Then the paper explained why rural Americans need to learn more about Muslims: "The only way to defeat radical Islam is to recognize that it’s not the same thing as the mainstream branches of that faith. Some of the people Goode would bar from this country are part of the force we need to defeat radical Islam. Insulting Muslims won’t hurt Goode in the 5th District, but it makes it harder for his views on immigration to be taken seriously in a big, complex, diverse and dangerous world. Pandering to hometown fears and unfounded worries by attacking a defenseless local minority is certainly no way to make this country safer." (Read more) For the Bee's news story, click here.

We'd like to see some other papers in Goode's largely rural district follow the 21,000-circulation Bee's lead. They could take some cues from The Washington Post, which verbally horse-whipped Goode for what it called "colossally stupid . . . bigotry," and concluded: "Mr. Goode was evidently napping in class the day they taught the traditional American values of tolerance, diversity and religious freedom. This country's history is rife with instances of uncivil, hateful and violent behavior toward newcomers, be they Jewish, Irish, Italian or plenty of others whose ethnicities did not jibe with some pinched view of what it means to be American. Mr. Goode's dimwitted outburst of nativism is nothing new. No, the real worry for the nation is that the rest of the world might take Mr. Goode seriously, interpreting his biased remarks about Muslims as proof that America really has embarked on a civilizational war against Islam. With 535 members, you'd think that Congress would welcome the presence of a single Muslim representative. Whether it can afford a lawmaker of Mr. Goode's caliber is another question." To read the entire editorial, click here. For a Post story today giving background on Goode, immigration and his district, click here.

Post takes close look at farm subsidies, to which many propose changes

Most American farmers don't get subsidies form the federal government, but most of the big ones do, and with the Farm Bill up for a rewrite by a newly Democratic Congress, Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert Gaul of The Washington Post have taken a timely and detailed look at the farm-subsidy system.

They point to Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's calls for cuts as an example of how the debate has changed. "I didn't get much of a reaction from farmers, because deep down most of them know the system needs to be changed," said Vilsack, who is the only major Democrat who has declared he's running for president.

"Politicians such as Vilsack have joined a host of interest groups from across the political spectrum that are pressing for changes in government assistance to agriculture," the Post reports. "They want the money moved from large farmers to conservation, nutrition, rural development and energy research. Vilsack, for example, favors programs that improve environmental practices on farms."

But proponents of changes -- which include Bread for the World, the free-market Club for Growth, the National Corn Growers Association and fruit and vegetable growers who want their first subsidies -- " will be going up against one of Washington's most effective lobbies as Congress takes up a new farm bill next year," the Post reports. "The farm bloc is an efficient, tightknit club of farmers, rural banks, insurance companies, real-estate operators and tractor dealers," led by such groups as the 5.2-million-member American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cotton Council and the USA Rice Federation.

Farm subsidies "are heavily tilted to large commercial farmers growing a few row crops in a handful of states," the Post notes. "But the money also is widely distributed to a middle group of more than 130,000 farms, each receiving $25,000 to $100,000. The federal dollars ripple through local economies, adding to purchasing power at stores and businesses -- and creating a political constituency for the programs."

Large farners "often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out," Gaul writes in a story explaining how subsidies have turned farms into big businesses. The Post found that in the latest year available, 2004, at least 1,900 corporations and other entities "collected $312 million more than they would have if their farms were held to strict limits" on payments, circumvented by "complex legal structures, such as dividing a single farm into many paper corporations." Click here for that story, which explains how efforts to limit and reform subsidies failed. For a story by Gaul on a mid-size Nebraska farmer who says he depends on subsidies, click here.

USDA releases more data on subsidy payments to individual farmers

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is revealing for the first time "just who has received billions of dollars in farm subsidy payments," reported Libby Quaid of The Associated Press. "But people will have to wait to look up their neighbors' payments, because the 64 million records are too unwieldy for the department's Web site. Instead, the department is providing the information to several news organizations and the Environmental Working Group, a public-interest group that tracks payments and intends to post the data online for Internet users." (See Dec. 18 blog item on annual update by EWG.)

"It should provide a lot more information than we've been able to get, particularly for farmers who have been receiving money through co-ops," EWG President Ken Cook told AP. "This will be the first chance to see how much they've gotten." He said the records are especially relevant as Congress prepares to pass a new farm bill next year. "I expect it will once again highlight the inequities in the program," Cook said. "The big guys get most of the money. I don't think anything will change with respect to that. We just may be able to quantify it a little bit better."

Farm subsidies are public records, but the government has often limited the information to the names of corporations, cooperatives and other groups. The 2002 farm bill directed USDA's Farm Service Agency to record those entities' ownership and membership interests and their payments. (Read more)

Journalist-turned-entrepreneur: Internet is new farm-to-market road

Roy Bragg of the San Antonio Express-News writes from Snyder, Texas: "Bill Robertson sees a future for this remote West Texas oil-patch town that involves a global conference center, a vibrant tourist economy and a work force of big-city expatriates who'd rather telecommute from cattle ranches than waste time in urban HOV lanes." (For the uninitiated, that acronym means high-occupancy vehicles.)

Robertson, a former television journalist and a native of the town of 11,000, plans to open its first Internet cafe next year. "This is the technology that will take Snyder into the 21st century and beyond, but still have a town where visitors will feel like they've stepped into a small town of the past. And this is where local people will see it," Robertson told the Express-News.

Just as Texas' farm-to-market road system "revolutionized life for thousands of country towns, the Internet is bringing about a fundamental change in small-town Texas, yanking isolated communities out of the sticks and putting them on the grid," Bragg writes. "With the ability to move terabytes of information in seconds, stretches of empty highway become insignificant and small businesses that sit hundreds of miles from customers can compete with larger competitors in larger cities."

Examples in Snyder: A novelist who does research more quickly, and thus produces more books; and a caterer who "makes a living selling seasonings over the Internet. His factory is near Fort Worth [230 miles to the east]. His distribution center is here. And he has customers on three continents." Greg Clary of the Texas Center for Rural Entrepreneurship told Bragg, "It's allowed them to do business in a completely different way. They're not tied to their local economy anymore. . . . You still find rural towns that are dying, but a lot of them aren't willing to do that. They're trying to build on their assets and figure out how to change and grow and be progressive without losing the quality of life that's valuable to them." (Read more)

Self-rescuers and other reforms prompted by mine disasters slow to come

Safety reforms enacted in the wake of last year's major coal-mine disasters "will be months — or years — in actually being enforced," Ken Ward Jr. reports in the Sunday Gazette-Mail of Charleston, W.Va.

Ward's leading example: "Thousands of West Virginia coal miners are still waiting for the additional emergency breathing devices promised by Gov. Joe Manchin and the coal industry." The two leading makers of the "self-contained self-rescuers" have them on backorder, but Draeger, a German company has thousands of similiar, slightly bulkier devices in a warehouse at the Pittsburgh airport, and "We don't have a backlog at all," the president of the firm's North American operations told Ward last month.

After the Sago Mine diaster killed 12 miners last January, "State and federal lawmakers ordered mining companies to provide additional emergency breathing devices to underground coal miners," Ward notes. "But now, regulators are accepting purchase orders as proof of compliance. No one has set firm dates for mine operators to actually give miners the additional SCSRs."

Ward notes other delays: Plans for better communications systems are not due to West Virginia officials until Aug. 31, and purchase orders will be accepted; a study on rescue shelters is not due until December 2007; and the Mine Safety and Health Administration has until the end of next year to write regulations requiring additional mine rescue teams. (Read more)

Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006

Miss USA's hometown editor reflects on how his weekly did the story

"World media uproar . . . " How many times have you seen those words above a local story in a weekly newspaper? Greg Wells used them in a secondary headline this week in The Times Journal of Russell Springs, Ky. (population 3,000), hometown of Miss USA Tara Conner, who got a reprieve from pageant owner Donald Trump after expecting to be fired for misbehavior in New York City.

Wells told that story, and didn't sugarcoat it, relaying most of the reports about Conner's scandalous behavior, including a local connection: "Since winning the national pageant, Conner has broken off her engagement to Russell County's Adam Mann and has been linked to club owners, disk jockeys and television personalities in the New York club scene." The Times Journal's cutline for the photo above in a local bank read, "Life in Russell County halted momentarily as news networks carried live the news conference at which Donald Trump agreed to keep Tara Conner as Miss USA, following a week of allegations about her New York lifestyle."

In an article written at the request of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, Wells offered this advice to rural editors in similar situations: "Tell the story, tell the feelings of the people involved if you can, and let others tell all the not-so-nice details about the allegations. But take those and add them to the story. Remember, at the end of the day, or in our case the end of the week, you’ll have to live in your town. Be fair, honest, up front and nice. That makes life better all around, and it’s good for business."

Wells expressed disdain for many out-of-town journalists who called him: "They all wanted the same thing, my sources. They are more than my sources, though. These are my people. They are the people that look to us for the news, and the community that looks to this paper for support and comfort when troubling things come along. I can categorize these callers in two groups: Those who were amazed that the first words out of my mouth weren’t “Howdy” or “Hey y’all” and those who acted like trained, experienced professionals. It was so easy to hear the contempt in some of the voices at having to call the lowly country folks, and, heaven forbid, a weekly newspaper editor." The paper's circulation is 5,000.

Wells added, "During all of this was the first time I’d ever heard anyone say, “Name your price” when talking about a photo. It was a little surreal. I didn’t name a price. I didn’t have to wrestle with that ethical problem, since I don’t think the kind of photos they wanted exist." His story in the newspaper said they wanted photos of "anything of her less than fully clothed or with a beer at a party."

Amid the uproar, Wells had another big story to chase, the quick recovery of a drowning victim in Russell County's signature feature, Lake Cumberland, with special, rarely used sonar equipment from Idaho. "I’d also been trying to chase a story on a murder from last Wednesday," he wrote. "So now there were three major stories working, and there was only one of me, and the calls were still coming in." (Read more)

The sonar story, big news in a county that has many drownings, shared the top of the Times Journal's front page with the headline “Tara: 'I will not let you down'” and the above photo. A secondary photo showed a Lexington, Ky., television reporter doing a stand-up. The story quoted Conner's parents, who had rebuffed national media. The headline above the story's jump read, "TARA: She has a second chance, the praise of her father for facing the music, and media from all over the world buzzing." For a PDF of the newspaper's front page, click here. For the jump page, click here.

Rural schools use retired part-time teachers, resist consolidation

Rural elementary schools in Oklahoma "are able to keep fantastic educators in the classrooms, even if it is just a few days a week," through part-time employment of retired teachers, reports Josh Newton of the Talequah Daily Press. “Little schools like this can benefit from people that are available from retirement,” a Skelly School superintendent told Newton. “Two or three little schools can share.”

Newton puts the topic in context: "Other rural schools around the nation aren’t faring as well as Skelly is. Once part of thousands of smaller schools, many are dipping so low in student numbers, they are being forced to close the doors, sending students and parents to neighboring school districts." Newton cites the Organization of Rural Oklahoma Schools, the main goal of which is to “oppose legislation mandating consolidation or combining of administrative units based on number of students, number of districts, and/or size (square miles) of a district.”

Newton cites research by Dr. Wenfan Yan of Indiana University of Pennsylvania that argues against consolidation of rural schools: “Rural countywide school districts had much larger total district expenditures than the other types of districts [in Pennsylvania],” Yan wrote. “If ‘economies of scale’ exist, the expenditures per-pupil for rural countywide school districts should be less than those from the other types of non-countywide school districts. The results of this study, however, did not find any statistical differences ... in their per-pupil expenditures. To merge small rural school districts in Pennsylvania on the basis of cost efficiency, therefore, is not supported by this study.” (Read more)

Georgia school district agrees to drop textbook stickers about evolution

A suburban Atlanta school board agreed Tuesday to stop using a disclaimer that calls evolution "a theory, not a fact." To settle a lawsuit from parents, the Cobb County schools "agreed not to take out or edit materials on evolution in textbooks and to pay $166,659 toward attorney fees in the case," report Diane Stepp and Kristina Torres of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (AJC photo)

The stickers were a compromise with parents who opposed the teaching of evolution, but other parents "argued that the sticker promoted religion in classrooms and violated the separation of church and state," notes the AJC.The school board chairwoman, Teresa Plenge, said yesterday that the stickers are constitutional but the board felt "the need to put this divisive issue behind us." A federal judge ordered the stickers removed almost two years ago, and the board complied but appealed. This May, the appeals court said "declined to rule on the constitutionality of the disclaimers because the records of the proceedings sent to it were incomplete," the Journal-Constitution says. The court told the judge to retry the case or add to the evidence with new proceedings. Faced with more legal action, the board capitulated. (Read more)

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which joined in the case when it was sent back to the lower court, praised the decision. “Students should be taught sound science, and the curriculum should not be altered at the behest of aggressive religious groups,” Lynn said in a release.

Texas jury rejects lawsuit against largest wind farm; appeal planned

"A company that built the world's largest wind farm has won a lawsuit filed by neighboring landowners who said the wind turbines were too loud and devalued their property," the Houston Chronicle reports.

The jury ruled for FPL Energy, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light, after a two-week trial. Trey Cox of Dallas, an attorney for FPL, "said he also believes that jurors considered the benefits and promise of wind energy to the state and nation. The plaintiffs said they will appeal," the Chronicle reports.

The farm is in Taylor County, of which Abilene is the county seat. Similar lawsuits have been filed against wind farms in Jack and Cooke counties in North Texas, northeast of Abilene.

"Plaintiffs attorney Steve Thompson said the verdict was the first of its kind in Texas," reports Jerry Daniel Reed of the Abilene Reporter-News -- one of the few papers that tells not only who wrote the story, but who edited it and who wrote the headline. (Read more)

Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006

Ask your member of Congress: Will you endorse C-SPAN cameras?

C-SPAN has asked House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi to let the network "bring its own cameras into the chamber, under its own direction," the Los Angeles Times notes in an editorial. "That way, viewers would get more of the flavor of the House and the personality of its members. They would be more likely to see such excitement as members' reactions to provocative remarks, committee chairmen holding court in the back of the chamber and last-minute cajoling to win badly needed votes."

Citing Pelosi's pledge to make the House more open, C-SPAN Chief Executive Brian Lamb "also wants immediate access to voting records. A giant electronic display board inside the chamber provides a real-time view of how individual members vote (and change their votes), but C-SPAN currently can show nothing but the total for each party until long after the tallying has ceased. It's not unusual for the majority party's leadership to extend the voting period while they woo holdouts, but unlike people watching from the gallery, C-SPAN viewers can't tell who those holdouts might be," the Times notes. (Read more)

The Times says the House should "bring some reality to its TV," but says Pelosi is likely to reject Lamb's request. We say: Don't give up so fast. The more pressure Pelosi gets on this issue, the more difficult it will be for her to reject it. The pressure that counts for her is pressure from members; the pressure that counts for members is pressure from constituents. Local news media need to tell those constituents about the issue, and put their local members of Congress on the spot about it -- especially Pelosi's fellow Democrats. Ask them to write Pelosi a letter saying they endorse C-SPAN's request.

We'd like to see some editorials making these points: C-SPAN is a key device for Americans to keep up with and understand what's going on in Congress, but its coverage of House and Senate proceedings is not really journalism because it's not independent. Why should TV coverage of Congress be restricted in a way that coverage of state legislatures and city councils is not? Until those who run the chambers relinquish control of the cameras, C-SPAN viewers will always wonder what they're not seeing. Pelosi should realize that making the cameras independent would not only be consistent with her pledge for a more open House, but build trust with the public -- which would be good for Congress and for our republic. --Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Marijuana-decriminalization group says pot is nation's top crop by far

Marijuana is now the most valuable cash crop in the United States, exceeding the value of corn and wheat combined, says the Marijuana Policy Project, which wants to eliminate criminal penalties for pot use.

The report by Jon Gettman of Lovettsville, Va., who has a Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University and is an economic-development consultant, is at www.drugscience.org/bcr/index.html. Based on an estimated average value of $1,606 per pound and estimates that only 8 percent of the outdoor crop and 2 percent of the indoor crop were seized, the report values this year's crop at $35.8 billion. The U.S. corn crop was worth $23.3 billion and wheat was worth $7.45 billion, the report says.

The study concluded that the top marijuana producing states are California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii, and Washington (which was No. 2 in indoor production, behind California). The top pot-exporting states, in ratio of production to use, were Hawaii, Tennessee and Kentucky.

In Kentucky, the estimated marijuana crop was worth $4.47 billion, more than 10 times the value of the state's hay or tobacco crops, which ranked second and third. Marijuana also ranked first in the top tobacco state, North Carolina, at $672 million compared to $540 million for the legal leaf. Pot was estimated to be the top cash crop in 10 other states: Alaska, Alabama, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee ($4.79 billion) and West Virginia. In 18 other states, it was estimated to be among the top three cash crops.

Monday, Dec. 18, 2006

Retiring judges have looser tongues, can make news and commentary

On the bench, judges are obliged to suppress their personal beliefs and apply the laws passed by the legislative branch and enforced by the executive. Especially at the trial-court level, judges are supposed to keep mum about the policy decisions made by lawmakers. But when judges leave the bench, they become free to make their views known, so interviewing them can make news or good commentary.

Nick Cenegy, a Knight Fellow of Community Journalism at the University of Alabama’s master’s degree program at The Anniston Star, interviewed retiring Circuit Judge Sam Monk and found that he no longer supported the death penalty, though in 28 years on the bench "He has sentenced six people to death and has sent at least as many to be locked away for a lifetime," Cenegy wrote in a Sunday column.

Cenegy continued: "Monk, in part, is guided by his religion. Any New Testament Christian should have a few fundamental issues with a society murdering one of its own, he says. . . . Still, more than 70 percent of Alabamians strongly support the death penalty. Perhaps they find no conflict with their religion — or choose to ignore it. Through their comments, Monk and others [appellate judges quoted in the column] reveal that they are tired of carrying the cross for an imperfect system of revenge by death. Even if it’s the small cross: the syringe" of lethal injection.

Cenegy makes plainer his own opposition to capital punishment in a riveting piece about the judge's last case, a double murder in which Monk gave a death sentence. Click here to read it. Click here to read the column, and here for a transcript of Cenegy's interview with Monk. Access to the Star's site requires a subscription, but a free, one-day pass is available.

Group updates its database of farm subsidies, which rose 68% in 2005

The Environmental Working Group has completed the annual update of its Farm Subsidy Database, a useful tool for rural journalists. It includes more information than before on individual owners whose identities may have been hidden by complex ownership structures. The database is searchable by name, city and ZIP code of residence, county of the farm, and gives histories of payments.

For example, the available data include the amount of payments to farms in a given county last year, with the top recipients in any of the three most recent years or since 1995; and the same type of data by the mailing addresses of the recipients. Data are also available by congressional district.

EWG, which wants Congress to base crop subsidies on conservation practices rather than prices, said in a release that farm subsidies rose 68 percent last year to a four-year high of $21 billion, from $12.5 billion in 2004. The main causes of the big increase were hurricanes and low commodity prices. The figures do not include payments for land conservation and compensation to tobacco growers for the end of their quotas and price supports. Those payments (itemized in the database only by number of recipients, not amounts) brought the total to $24.3 billion.

Payments are projected to fall sharply next year -- mainly for corn, which reached an all-time high last year but is now being boosted by ethanol demand -- "but also for soybeans and other crops, highlighting the relative importance and advantage of multi-year, contract-based payments to farmers and taxpayers," EWG President Cook wrote. "They are predictable and far less trade-distorting than price-triggered subsidies," and do more for rural communities, he said.

"Subsidies, which encourage lower prices, benefit commodity buyers such as Archer Daniels Midland Co., Bunge Ltd. and ConAgra Foods Inc.," Alan Bjerga of Bloomberg News reports. (Read more) In any given year, 90 percent of the payments in any given year go to growers of five crops -- rice, wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans, EWG says. Ten percent of the recipients collected 73 percent of all subsidies in the last 11 years, totaling $120.5 billion.

Cook noted that some conservation programs use multi-year contracts: the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, the Conservation Reserve Program, the Wetlands Reserve Program, and the new Conservation Security Program. "If refined and expanded in the upcoming Farm Bill, these instruments and others like them could provide billions more in support to farmers and ranchers, in effect bridging a significant part of the gap between the current fixed direct payments and costly, unpredictable, price-triggered payments," Cook wrote " A conservation framework has the additional substantive and political advantage of being available to all farmers and ranchers."

New form of agri-tourism: City slickers pay to do farm work!

"For many of today's tourists, getting to do farm chores is a vacation opportunity they'll gladly pay to enjoy," says a story from Lee Agri-Media, part of the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain.

"The sophisticated and city-weary travelers have seen the bright lights and the tinsel and are looking for things that are real," Tom Benson, owner of Benson Communications Inc. of Minneapolis, said at the recent AgriCultural Heritage Tourism Conference in Sioux Falls, S.D.. "Travelers may be drawn to rural locations because they're concerned about safety or want to spend quality time together, Benson said. Many people had grandparents or great-grandparents who farmed and are wide open to the idea of a rural vacation. With today's larger farm operations and fewer people in agriculture, people are losing touch with agriculture. Many kids think their food originates from a fast-food restaurant or a grocery store, he said."

At the Adams Family Farm in Vermont, adults pay $12.95 per day ($10.95 per child) to gather eggs, bottle-feed baby calves and milk a goat. It's not all work; there are bonfires, barn dances, star-gazing, hayrides and outings to see wildlife.

Billie Jo Waara, director of the South Dakota Office of Tourism, told the conference that research and partnerships are key elements for success in agri-tourism. (Read more)

FCC ownership rules have big implications for rural areas, center says

The Federal Communications Commission should prevent common ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations, and further limit the number of stations that a company can own, to protect the interests of the 60 million rural Americans, the vice president of the Center for Rural Strategies told the commission at its hearing on the issue last week.

"Those who suggest that the marketplace will make media accountable in rural areas have a difficult -- and I would say impossible -- burden of proof," said Tim Marema, vice president of the center, based in Whitesburg, Ky. "Media consolidation and relaxation of public service rules have created additional hardships for rural areas that were already hard hit."

Marema cited the well-known example of Minot, N.D., where warnings could not be issued for a chemical spill because all the town's radio stations were automated or remote-controlled because of chain ownership. He said coal-mine safety "has escaped metro-media attention," the major exception being the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia.

"When workers die because of federal safety violations and that isn't news, that in itself is a story," Marema said, noting that The Courier-Journal recently closed its Eastern Kentucky bureau and now covers the industry from Louisville. "In some rural areas, there is no metro-media news coverage to improve. Rural America is falling off the metro-media map. I fear that does not bode well for other commercially marginal markets and issues." For more from the Center for Rural Strategies, click here.

Sinclair settles with fired bureau chief who questioned show on Kerry

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns many stations in rural America, and Jonathan Lieberman, the former chief of its former Washington bureau, "have decided to end a two-year legal battle over his dismissal during the 2004 presidential election campaign," The Baltimore Sun reports.

The Maryland-based company fied Leiberman in October 2004 "after he publicly criticized Sinclair's decision to pre-empt normal programming at 40 of the company's stations to air what he called 'an extremely one-sided and negative' documentary about Democratic nominee John Kerry," writes the Sun's Nick Madigan. "Sinclair later sued Leiberman, saying he divulged confidential information about the company in an interview" with the Sun, and Lieberman counter-sued, saying his dismissal was "retaliation, pure and simple, for his public stand that Sinclair's plans were inconsistent with journalistic ethics."

Both suits have been dropped. "Under the terms of the settlement, no one involved in the case may speak publicly about it," Madigan writes. "Sinclair had prevailed in an earlier case before the Maryland Department of Labor, which found that Leiberman had violated provisions of his contract that prohibited speaking to the press without permission about internal company matters."

Ohio boosts records law, except on gun permits; S.D. paper prints them

"A bill that mandates public-records training for elected officials and stiffens penalties for withholding records has cleared the Ohio Legislature," The Associated Press reports. "The bill also would increase the likelihood that those denied records will get their attorney's fees paid."

The bill, supported by newspapers in Ohio, "does contain one key concession," AP reports. Journalists will no longer be able to copy data about holders of permits to carry concealed deadly weapons. They will still be able to look at the lists.

The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D., recently published the names of local people who had permits to carry concealed deadly weapons. Metro Editor Jeff Martin defended that by quoting his old boss, Mike Gartner of the Ames Daily Tribune in Iowa, who said this when the Tribune printed the names of gun-permit holders: "We print the names of people in the news because that's our business. Our pact with readers is that we'll tell them what is going on in Ames and Story County. That means we'll tell them not only what's happening at the city council and at Iowa State University, but also who is arrested, who is having babies, who is selling his house (and for how much), who has died (and of what cause). People expect that from us. If we leave out just one name, just one fact, we have failed in our mission and damaged our credibility."

"That's why we printed those gun permits in Iowa," Martin wrote. "It's the kind of journalism that goes to the heart of the First Amendment. It was then, and it is now." (Read more)

Friday, Dec. 15, 2006

Western states with much federal land want funds from it for schools

Thirteen Western states that hold 93 percent of the nation’s federally owned land are asking the government to compensate them for the lack of property-tax revenues from the land. “A coalition of those states, led by lawmakers from Utah and Nevada, has been formed to lobby for an annual $4 billion in lost local and state property-tax revenues on the federal land, nearly $1.9 billion of which would have gone to pay for public education,” writes Jessica Tonn of Education Week. According to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, nearly 52 percent of the land in the 13 states is owned by the government, compared to only 4 percent of the land in all other states.

“To compound the problem, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that Western states have higher pupil-teacher ratios and higher enrollment projection through 2013 than do their Eastern counterparts,” writes Tonn. “The result, officials from those states say, is that although the Western states have property-tax rates comparable to those in the East and devote comparable percentages of their budgets to education, they are experiencing lower growth in per-pupil spending” than elsewhere.

School districts can receive funds for public land in their borders, but only from those acquired after 1938, reports Tonn. Most of the land in the West was federal long before then, so California and Colorado are the only states that receive any money from the program that helps school districts. A bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, suggested selling off 5 percent of the federal land in each state and passing control to local governments that could sell or lease it to fund education. No hearings have been held on the bill, but Bishop says he will bring the issue up again. (Read more)

National-forest school district subsidies are not renewed by Congress

Rural schools in 42 states may face budget cuts after Congress did not reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Act, which subsidizes about 4,400 small school districts around national forests. “Congress first approved it in 2000 to make up for declining revenue in timber-producing areas and to guarantee districts a steady income. The law was up for renewal this year, but lawmakers left Washington on Saturday without approving it, leaving many districts scrambling to replace funding that, in a few cases, amounts to more than half of their budgets,” writes Greg Toppo of USA Today.

“School advocates say it would cost about $430 million to extend the law for one year. Unlike many funding bills, the forest schools act is not part of a continuing resolution and would likely have to be approved on its own,” writes Toppo. “Rural superintendents this month are planning a lobbying blitz as members of Congress head home to their districts. It's expected to extend into January and February, when lawmakers return to Washington for the start of the 110th Congress.” (Read more)

Update, Dec. 20: The lack of reauthorization "could mean layoffs of school staff, program reductions and potholes that go unfilled in some areas," writes Alisha Wyman of The Union Democrat in Tuolumne County, Calif. "Historically, national forests have given counties 25 percent of the revenues from timber sales to make up for property tax losses on the tax-exempt federal land. But when logging declined 80 percent in Northern California, Washington and Oregon due to environmental pressures, the funding dropped precipitously" and the act was passed "to make up for the drop." (Read more)

Miners' widows angry at W.Va. governor and aide with industry history

“Frustrated by a cursory briefing and a confusing report, families of the miners killed in the Sago Mine disaster are focusing their anger on Gov. Joe Manchin and his pick to run the state mine safety office, longtime Consol Energy official Ron Wooten,” writes Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette. During a private briefing for the families, Wooten responded to their questions by simply instructing them to read the report. In response to a question about what would happen if there were another lightning storm nearby, he answered, “I wouldn’t want to be in there.”

“During the private meeting, Manchin stepped in and told Wooten he had expected a more detailed briefing, similar to one given a month earlier to the widows of two miners killed in the Aracoma Mine fire. Administration officials promised the families a better briefing, and then canceled an afternoon news conference, but not before copies of the report leaked out and were splashed all over the news.”

“Our governor has to be totally embarrassed for appointing him to this position,” Pam Campbell, the sister-in-law of Sago miner Marty Bennett told the Gazette. “We’ve got miners in coal mines that our director of mine safety and health would not want to be in. They have no plan implemented about what they’re going to do if there is a lightning storm.” (Read more) For more background, see another story on the findings and the families’ reactions, which appeared in the Tuesday, Dec. 12 edition of The Rural Blog.

In southeastern Kentucky, dead miners’ families seek medical benefits

In southeastern Kentucky, widows of coal miners picketed yesterday to have their health insurance extended. “The widows of three Harlan County men who have died in separate coal mining accidents in the last two years picketed a Cloverlick mine Thursday that is being operated by the owner of the Holmes Mill mine where five men died in May,” writes Deanna Lee-Sherman of the Harlan Daily Enterprise.

“Melissa Lee and three other Darby families have requested that Ralph Napier, the owner of the Darby mine and Orion Resources Inc., provide an 18-month extension of their medical coverage through COBRA, which requires most employers with group health plans to offer employees the option of continuing their coverage if it would otherwise cease due to a termination, layoff or another change in employment status,” writes Sherman. Their health insurance will expire at the end of this year. (Read more)

"I think this is kind of a first at a coal mine where there's no labor agreement in effect," Johnson, a former safety representative for the United Mine Workers, told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “There are no union mines in Eastern Kentucky these days, but this year, especially in contrast with last year, there are plenty of widows. Of 46 coal miners killed nationwide this year, 16 have died in Kentucky, federal statistics show,” writes Lee Mueller of the Herald-Leader. (Read more)

Study finds that wind power can be practical, with reserve planning

A new Minnesota study found that utilities can integrate up to 25 percent wind power into their systems at a cost of less than half a cent per kilowatt-hour of generation. The Midwest Wind Integration Study “is the latest in a series examining how utilities can manage ever-larger amounts of wind power on their systems, and it comes at a time of strong growth for the wind industry. Even though wind provides less than one percent of total U.S. electricity generation today, with 2,700 megawatts expected to be completed in 2006, wind will be the second-largest source of new power generation (in both new capacity installed and new electricity produced) for the second year in a row,” said a news release from the American Wind Energy Association.

The study said that “energy from wind generating facilities must be taken 'as delivered,' which necessitates the use of other controllable resources to keep the demand and supply of electric energy in balance.” It said that utilities must plan ahead to predict what wind conditions will be like and adjust the output from their other resources accordingly. To read the report, click here.

Texas journalists propose Free Flow of Information Act as shield law