While Boyd County Fiscal Court has resumed its $5,000 annual contribution to Tri-State Airport and Boyd Judge-Executive William “Bud” Stevens has appointed Economic and Community Development Director Nickie Smith to replace the late Morris Griffiths as the county’s representative on the airport’s board of directors, one suspects the contribution would have been discontinued and the board seat would have remained unfilled if Tri-State Airport Director Jerry Brienza had not brought the county’s snubbing of the airport to light.
Steven admits that he had “turned down” paying the county’s annual contribution to the airport last year because he didn’t realize the impact the airport located in Wayne County, W.Va., had on Boyd County. “I didn’t see the advantage at that time. I didn’t see where that $5,000 was going.”
First of all, Stevens had no authority to not make the payment. The $5,000 was included in the county’s budget approved by the fiscal court. As the county’s chief executive, Stevens had an obligation to adhere to the county’s budget. He was in no position to pick-and-choose which budget items to pay and which ones to ignore.
Even if the county lacked the funds to fulfill its budget obligations — which was not the case in this instance — Stevens would have to have the approval of the fiscal court to make the required spending cuts.
Beyond lacking the authority to decide on his own to not make the payment to airport, we find it amazing that Stevens failed to see the value of the airport to the entire region. The availability of commercial airline service is an important amenity to any community. Without it, many companies would not even consider locating in the Tri-State. Even with it, one of the reasons Ashland Inc. cited for moving its headquarters to Covington was to be closer to a larger airport.
Ironically, Stevens made his decision to not pay the county’s annual contribution to the airport just as air passenger service at Tri-State was being greatly improved. After enduring years of deteriorating airline service that was becoming more and more expensive, the arrival of Allegiance Airlines and the lowering a fares by existing airlines has made flying out of Tri-State an affordable option. As a result, the number of passengers using Tri-State has climbed steadily in the past five years.
This newspaper was a strong advocate for building a new airport between Huntington and Charleston that would combine Tri-State and Charleston’s Yeager Field, but since the demise of that idea, we have been an advocate of efforts to improve the service at Tri-State. While some local air passengers continue to fly out of Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington and even Charleston to take advantage of lower fares, more people are choosing to fly out of Tri-State.
Stevens insists he has seen the light and now recognizes just how important Tri-State Airport is to Boyd County and the entire region. Good, Better late than never.
Editorials
Backing airport — 09/23/09
Stevens had no authority to withhold budgeted funding
- 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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