Good moves to bolster E. Ky.

Requiring the coal industry to pay more of its own freight is a move in the right direction by Gov. Steve Beshear.

The legislature should take it further and also include other polluting industries that now pay just a small fraction of their permitting costs.

Beshear traveled to coal country Wednesday to announce plans for beefing up mine permitting and rescue teams.

The coal industry has been frustrated because the state mine-permitting process is backlogged by budget cuts and retirements.

Beshear issued an emergency regulation increasing coal permit fees, enabling the state to hire 19 permit reviewers.

The coal industry supported the fee change, which will generate $800,000, to be matched by the federal government for a total of $1.6 million.

Mine regulation was so underfunded in the last budget that Kentucky had to forfeit $1 million in federal funds and fell behind in strip-mine inspections. It's good to see environmental enforcement regain some of that federal support.

The coal industry could also have been required to pay more of its own safety costs. A federal law, upheld earlier this year, requires that mines have access to two rescue teams. Kentucky's underground mining inspectors have long doubled as crack rescuers. But the state needed more inspectors to fulfill the expanded federal requirement.

In other states, coal operators pay for their own rescue teams. But the Beshear administration wanted to help Kentucky's small operators who can't afford rescue teams. The administration estimates that as many as 3,000 people are employed by coal companies whose payrolls are no more than 35 people.

So the administration worked out an agreement with the Martin and Floyd county governments to use $1.4 million from their multicounty coal severance tax funds to hire an additional 15 mine-safety inspectors/rescuers.

Local governments in Eastern Kentucky understandably want to help the coal industry, especially small operators.

But the severance tax is really meant to diversify the economy in ways such as the Coal to Broadband initiative also announced by Beshear on his Eastern Kentucky tour.

A combination of multicounty severance tax and funding from the federal Appalachian Regional Commission will expand high-speed Internet service in Breathitt, Estill, Lee and Powell counties. The four counties have also joined together in a nonprofit technology authority.

Meanwhile, at a time when every tax dollar is stretched to the max, the legislature should build on what Beshear has started by increasing environmental permitting fees. Kentucky should stop subsidizing polluting industries while other states require them to pay a much greater share of their permitting costs.