Trump agency wants to close two Kentucky job-training centers. Hal Rogers isn’t happy.
A longtime Republican congressman plans to work against a Trump Administration decision that would eliminate more than 60 jobs in one of the poorest counties in Kentucky.
It’s not the first time U.S. Rep Hal Rogers has pushed back against administration decisions that would have meant less aid for an area Trump carried overwhelmingly.
In May 2017, for instance, the administration sought to cancel $444 million that Congress approved to build a prison in Letcher County — a project Rogers worked for years to get approved because of the promise of more than 300 jobs.
The administration also proposed ending funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission, which spent $24.4 million in Kentucky in the most recent fiscal year alone for water and sewer facilities, broadband infrastructure, worker training and other projects.
This time it’s the U.S. Forest Service Civilian Conservation Center (CCC) in McCreary County, which operates a Job Corps program.
U.S. Forest Service officials said last week that the agency intends to turn over operation of the McCreary County center and more than two dozen others around the country to the Department of Labor, including one in Menifee County.
The head of the Forest Service, Vicki Christiansen, told employees in an email that the Labor Department will propose “deactivation” of the center at Pine Knot in southern McCreary County, the one in Menifee County, and seven in other states.
Not so fast, said Rogers, currently in his 20th term representing Southern and Eastern Kentucky.
Rogers said the Forest Service and Labor Department didn’t give Congress notice of the proposed changes, and that he and others will send a letter “expressing our opposition and asking them to keep these important programs open.”
U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Lexington whose district includes Menifee County, has been asked to join in that letter and is considering how to respond to the issue, said spokeswoman Jodi Whitaker.
The only other Forest Service CCC program in Kentucky, Great Onyx CCC near Mammoth Cave, would remain open under the Labor Department’s plan.
However, the plan anticipates putting that center and others under contractors to run.
The Labor Department operates many Job Corps centers that are not at Forest Service facilities.
Local officials said losing the center in McCreary County would be a blow in a place where the poverty rate is nearly three times the national level and per capita income from 2012 through 2016 was $23,320, compared to $49,246 for the U.S., according to an ARC publication.
Out of 3,113 counties in the country, McCreary County ranked nearly dead last — 3,110 — in an analysis of economic measures.
There are 52 federal employees and 11 contract employees at the McCreary County center, which has an annual payroll of $4.26 million and also spends hundreds of thousands on utilities and contract medical and dental services, according to the office of McCreary County Judge-Executive Jimmie W. Greene II.
Students at the center also help with projects such as picking up litter, trimming trees, construction at the county park and projects with the Forest Service and National Park Service.
“That’ll hurt our community,” Ronald “Sonny” Fentress, the interim school superintendent, said of closing the center.
Greene said it would hurt more in McCreary County to lose the center than in other places because of the relative lack of good-paying jobs.
But closing the centers would be a financial setback in every county because the government purposefully put them in places with meager economies, said Larry E. King, who retired from the McCreary County center and was vice president for all the civilian conservation centers in the country.
The Job Corps provides education and job training for disadvantaged young people. Supporters say the program creates opportunities for those who have had trouble succeeding in traditional schools.
“I have had the pleasure of attending countless Job Corps events and graduations over the years to witness the confidence and guidance that these programs give our young people who need it most,” Rogers said in a statement.
At the McCreary center, where many students come from outside the county, the programs include carpentry, auto mechanics, culinary arts, urban forestry and computer technology for students ages 16 to 24, King said.
“These are good-paying jobs when they leave,” King said.
Greene’s office said nearly all the most recent 200-plus graduates of the McCreary center got jobs, while some went on to the military or continued their education.
In announcing that his department would give up 24 civilian conservation centers with Job Corps programs by Sept. 30, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, whose agency includes the Forest Service, said the agency needed to focus on its core mission to improve the nation’s forests.
The Labor Department said the move would create an opportunity to serve more students at “higher perfoming” centers at less cost to taxpayers by modernizing and reforming part of the Job Corps program.
King, the former employee at the McCreary County center, said the center’s performance meets or exceeds other centers in the system.
Closing the center is not a done deal, he said.
Opposition from elected officials, the community, the union that represents employees and others could alter the decision.
“It’s all up in the air right now,” King said.
Some of the administration’s prior efforts at cutbacks affecting Eastern Kentucky projects didn’t work out.
Congress preserved the $444 million budgeted for the Letcher County prison, and Rogers since got enough extra money appropriated to cover potential costs up to $510 million.
And as it did under prior presidents, Congress rejected killing the Appalachian Regional Commission.
It upped the agency’s budget for non-highway work to $165 million in the current budget, the highest in the agency’s history.
Trump proposed continuing that appropriation in the next budget, according to the agency.
This story was originally published May 31, 2019 at 9:54 AM.