Mike Duncan has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone from a small town tucked in the mountains of eastern Kentucky can rise to a position of national prominence and influence. Just four months after losing a re-election bid as chairman of the Republican National Committee, the Inez banker has become the new chairman of the board for the Tennessee Valley Authority. And, just as his behind-the-scenes brought a different management style to the national GOP, Duncan is quietly changing the role of members of TVA’s board.
Although Inez is not part of TVA’s region, Duncan was appointed to TVA’s board by President George W. Bush in March of 2006 and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He was named chairman of the board on May 18.
While board members traditionally have been involved in the day-to-day operation of TVA, Duncan said he wants to change that by shifting more responsibility to TVA executives, headed by President Tom Kilgore.
“We need to continue to work toward that transition from a management board to a policy-making board,” Duncan said.
As chairman of the GOP’s national committee — a position he lost to Michael Steele in January — Duncan was often called the “invisible chairman,” so unobtrusive, in fact, that many GOP insiders and activists didn’t even know who he was. Unfortunately for Duncan, the unpopularity of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made it virtually impossible to put together a winning ticket for the national GOP.
Organizations work best when members of the board set policy and choose leaders without meddling in the day-to-day affairs. That’s the approach Duncan wants the TVA board to take, and it’s the right one.
While eastern Kentucky is not part of TVA’s region, TVA does buy coal mined from both the eastern and western coalfields of Kentucky. That makes TVA important to this region’s economy.
While he supports using nuclear power, natural gas, wind and solar energy to help produce electricity in TVA’s region, Duncan rightly recognizes that coal will continue to be the primary source of producing electricity for the foreseeable future. The reason is simple: This region still has an abundance of coal.
That being said, TVA needs to be a national leader in promoting clean coal technology and must develop the safest way possible to store or dispose of coal ash. Coal ash ponds are not the answer.
Duncan also wants to shift TVA’s focus to conservation. That’s the right approach. Energy efficient homes, businesses and industries not only save consumers money but enable utilities like TVA to better use the electricity they produce.
Over the years, Duncan has served as chairman of the Morehead State University Board of Regents, chairman of the board of trustees at Alice Lloyd College, chairman of the Center for Rural Development in Somerset, a trustee of the Christian Appalachian Project and in numerous other influential positions — all while being a small-town banker in eastern Kentucky.
Don’t expect Mike Duncan, now 58, to attract too many headlines as TVA’s chairman. That’s not his style. Mike Duncan doesn’t boast about what he is doing — he just does it.
Editorials
Still influential — 06/11/09
Duncan moves from the GOP chairman to chairman of TVA
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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