The Corporation for Enterprise Development — a privately funded nonprofit entity — has given Kentucky a D for efforts to help families secure financial security. Lest one think the rating too harsh, consider the following statistics cited by the CFED:
-- Kentucky families continue to struggle to make ends meet. The state ranks 48th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for family income poverty and 43rd in bankruptcy.
-- The low education level of Kentucky adults hampers the state’s efforts to improve household income. The state ranks 43rd in the percentage of adults without a high school diploma or its equivalent, 49th in the percentage of adults with two-year college degrees, and 47th in the percentage of adults with four-year college degrees.
As this newspaper has said many times, we are convinced that the overall low level of education among Kentucky adults is this state’s biggest obstacle to economic development — and it is an obstacle only the people of Kentucky can eliminate by putting a priority on education.
-- While successful small businesses are critical to this state’s economic health, Kentucky ranks 50th in the number of loans to small businesses. Many owners of small businesses are women, but Kentucky ranks 45th among the 50 states and the District of Columbus in the businesses owned by women.
‰ While the CFED’s Scorecard found housing to be more affordable in Kentucky than most other states, it still ranked the state 44th in home ownership by gender and 41st in home ownership by race.
While the Scorecard does credit Kentucky for making significant progress in supporting the financial well-being of families, it must improve funding for education on all levels, with an emphasis on lowering the cost of attending college. If it fails to do that, the state will continue to lag behind most other states in the percentage of adults with college degrees.
The latest Scorecard tells us little that we did not already know. It is just another reminder of just how much we have to do to just catch up with the rest of the nation.
Editorials
State earns a D
Kentucky ranks near bottom in too many important areas
- 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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