All Appalachians know our region is rich in music – but this doesn’t always translate in to money for local residents. Yet the Crooked Road, southwestern Virginia’s heritage music trail, is working to change that. In recent years, through careful planning focused on local culture and decision making, this project has helped the region’s traditional […]
Coal production has been declining lately, and many counties in our listening area are concerned that they will be short on much needed revenue as less coal mined means fewer severance tax dollars coming in. In this report Ted Boettner and Paul Miller of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy describe the West […]
A WMMT report from the East Kentucky Leadership Conference, recently held in Prestonsburg, KY. One conference session engaged participants in discussion of a number of possibilities for the region’s economic and social future, including the establishment of permanent severance tax funds to support economic transition in the coalfields, Helen Lewis’s vision of “a clean glass […]
An old mountain song says, “What you gonna do when the weather gets cold? Do like a groundhog, hunt me a hole.” Across the mountains, folks are asking something like this —what will our communities do when our finite natural resources, like coal, are finally gone? One proposal from the West Virginia Center on Budget […]
