ASHLAND —
While his age and declining health kept him out of the public spotlight in recent years, there was a time when Clarence E. Jackson was one of the top leaders of the Democratic Party in Boyd County. Jackson died Monday at 83. He was buried Friday.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson represented the 100th District in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and he used that position to be an advocate in Frankfort for Ashland and northeast Kentucky. He worked with other area legislators such as Rep. Rocky Adkins and the late Sen. Nelson Robert Allen to help bring funding for the A-A Highway and the Simeon Willis Bridge.
We didn’t always agree with Jackson while he was in the General Assembly. For example, we were disappointed when he voted against the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, one of the most important pieces of legislation in the last half century. However, even though we sometimes disagreed, we never questioned Jackson always did what he thought was best for his district and for Kentucky,
When he lost his seat in the House of Representatives to the late Don Farley, Jackson did not retire from public life. Instead, he served several terms on the Boyd County Fiscal Court, and at one time, he was considered one of the favorites to be elected Boyd County judge-executive. However, that was one goal he never attained.
When not busy in politics, Jackson was a steelmaker, serving 44 years as a steel pourer at Armco Steel’s Ashland Works. His career as a hard-working laborer at the local mill endeared him to his fellow Steelworkers, and Jackson could always depend on the support of United Steelworkers 1865 and other labor unions when he ran for office.
Clarence Jackson was a common man who was not well-educated or particularly articulate. But he had a love for public service and spent most of his adult life trying to help this community. He served Ashland and Boyd County well.
Editorials
Clarence Jackson
He served the area well in legislature, on fiscal court
- Editorials
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The next step
The people — or at least those who took the time to vote in Tuesday’s special election — have spoken. The issue of alcohol sales in Grayson has ben settled for at least the next three years.
In an outcome that surprised many, Grayson voters rather convincingly for the legal sale of alcohol in the city for the first time since 1937. With 511 voters answering in the affirmative to the question, “Are you in favor of alcoholic beverages in Grayson, Ky.?” as opposed to 393 voting “no,” the results were not even close. The measure passed in all seven of the city’s precincts. -
Top Father
In the Spade family, the vote was unanimous. Both 12-year-old Emma Spade, who will be a seventh-grader at Verity Middle School this fall, and Emma’s 11-year-old brother Will, who attends Hagar Elementary, both thought so highly of their dad — Ponderosa Elementary School principal Matt Spade — that they both wrote essays nominating him for the Ashland Breakfast Kiwanis Club’s annual Father of the Year award, presented annually on the Tuesday before Father’s Day.
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An unselfish act
Even before the start of the recent Boyd County Health Department’s Bicycle Rodeo, Gavin Eckard said that if he won one of the two bicycle given away at the event, he would give his new bike to someone who needed it more than he did.
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Crop still banned
When their colleagues in the U.S. Senate rejected their efforts to legalize industrial hemp production as part of the Senate farm bill, Kentucky’s two Republican senators — Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and freshman Rand Paul — reacted to the Senate refusal to include their hemp proposal in the bill by saying they would oppose the comprehensive farm bill.
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It's not the breed
Lorie Akers wants the Ashland City Commissioner to adopt an ordinance banning pit bulls in the city. Since she claimed her Chihuahua Paco was attacked and killed by a neighbor’s pit bull while the little dog was chained in the back yard, it is understandable that Akers is worried that her children and other pets could be endangered by pit bulls.
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A necessary evil
The shifting of the tax burden that began when the Ashland Board of City Commissioners first adopted the payroll tax in the 1990s continues as the mayor and four elected commissioners prepare to increase the payroll tax from 1.5 to 2 percent while at the same time decreasing property taxes.
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No time to read
The complaints of two leading legislators about a provision added to a complex pension reform bill approved by the 3013 Kentucky General Assembly points hat can happen when legislative leaders wait until the final days or even hour of a legislative session to bring major pieces of legislation. In so doing, they force legislators to vote on bills they have not even had time to read.
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To the polls
On Tuesday, residents of Grayson will discover if attitudes about the sale of alcohol in the city have changed in the past 42 years. It is an important question, and we encourage registered voters to take the time to go to the polls Tuesday.
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No snickers
When agricultural experts first began suggesting in the 1980s that raising goats could be a viable source of farm income to help offset the decline in tobacco income, most area farmers snickered.
Come on now, farmers thought, raising goats for meat? Who eats goat meat? If anything, you raised goats for their milk, not their meat. -
'Lost the public'
Tracy Boyd, president of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ and Exhibitors’ Association, says he is convinced that modern-day show horses are cleaner than they have ever been.
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The next step
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