It's Sunshine Week; it's never been more important

By Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

For a dozen years now, the American Society of News Editors has led the observance of Sunshine Week, celebrating open government and freedom of the news media in the service of democracy. This year's observance, March 12-18, is the most important ever.

Polls show trust and confidence in the news media to be at all-time low, and President Trump has called leading news organizations enemies of the people. The growing anti-journalism feeling has begun to affect even rural journalists, so it's time for news organizations at all levels to be about explaining what we do and why we do it.

The point of a "week" is to have repeated impact on the audience from various sources, so we hope weekly newspapers will promote Sunshine Week in this week's and next week's editions. ASNE has posted a budget for coverage, and The Associated Press has a full package of coverage, available to non-members, on the Sunshine Week site. Columns, cartoons, public-records data, Sunshine Week logos, sample proclamations for adoption by government officials and a page for educators are available in the Sunshine Week toolkit.

Sunshine Week is scheduled each year to include national Freedom of Information Day, March 16. That is the birthday of James Madison, father of the First Amendment. Sunshine Week is made possible by an endowment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and this year by a donation from The Gridiron Club and Foundation of Washington, D.C.

County-level political divide separating rural and urban America has exploded since 1992

FiveThirtyEight graphic; click on it for larger version

Major party candidates are winning counties by larger margins, displaying the increased rural-urban divide in the U.S., reports David Wasserman of FiveThirtyEight. That means "purple America" is becoming a thing of the past, replaced by counties that are either red or blue.

It's not a new phenomenon. Bill Bishop, who inspired The Rural Blog, wrote in the 2008 book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, that people increasingly flock with others who share similar socioeconomic profiles and politics, leading to rural areas becoming more conservative and cities more liberal.

The rural-urban divide has continued to grow, as evidenced by the 2016 presidential election, where Donald Trump was overwhelmingly popular in rural areas, while Hillary Clinton won most of the major urban areas. Wasserman notes that "61 percent of voters cast ballots in counties that gave either Clinton or Trump at least 60 percent of the major-party vote," up from 50 percent in 2012 and 39 percent in 1992.

"Of the nation’s 3,113 counties (or county equivalents), just 303 were decided by single-digit margins—less than 10 percent," compared to 1,096 in 1992, "even though that election featured a wider national spread," Wasserman writes. "During the same period, the number of extreme landslide counties—those decided by margins exceeding 50 percentage points—exploded from 93 to 1,196, or over a third of the nation’s counties."

"Between 1992 and 2016, the share of voters living in extreme landslide counties quintupled from 4 percent to 21 percent," Wasserman writes. While communities can change allegiances, Wasserman notes that "most places just aren’t budging—in fact, they’re doubling down. In an increasing number of communities like Baldwin County, Alabama, which gave Trump 80 percent of its major-party votes, and San Mateo, California, which gave Clinton 80 percent, an entire generation of youth will grow up without much exposure to alternative political points of view. If you think our political climate is toxic now, think for a moment about how nasty politics could be 20 or 30 years from now." (Chart: Major-party presidential candidates have increasingly won more counties by larger margins)

Drug and mental-health treatment in Medicaid expansion would be optional under House plan

House Republicans' replacement for Obamacare would repeal in 2020 the requirement that substance abuse and mental-health care be covered under Medicaid expansion. That could have a disproportionate impact in rural areas, where such services tend to be less accessible already.

"The proposal would also roll back the Medicaid expansion under the act — commonly known as Obamacare — which would affect many states bearing the brunt of the opiate crisis, including Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia expanded Medicaid under the ACA," report Katie Zezima and Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post. "Advocates and others stress that mental-health disorders sometimes fuel drug addiction, making both benefits essential to combating the opioid crisis. . . . Republicans on the committee argue that the change would give states additional flexibility in coverage decisions, and believe they would continue to provide addiction and mental-health coverage to Medicaid recipients if needed."

However, President Trump has vowed to expand drug treatment, and "Several Republican senators expressed concern about removing the benefits. Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), stating that the plan does not 'provide stability and certainty' for individuals and families enrolled in Medicaid expansion programs, or flexibility for states," the Post reports.

The reporters note, "Nearly 1.3 million people receive treatment for mental-health and substance abuse disorders under the Medicaid expansion, according to an estimate by health care economists Richard G. Frank of the Harvard Medical School and Sherry Glied of New York University."

Frank told the Post that dropping addiction treatment services for low-income people is especially harmful, because they are more likely to abuse drugs. "He said Medicaid recipients who are covered for addiction treatment and maintain their coverage through 2020 would not lose the benefit under the GOP proposal. But, he added, because addiction is a chronic-relapse disease, people may get clean, relapse, stop working and need to go back on Medicaid," the Post reports.

Arkansas legislators' war on transparency broadens to include newspapers' public notices

UPDATE: The public-notice bill has been referred for study during the interim between legislative sessions.

The fight to keep public notices in newspapers across the United States has come to Arkansas. "HB 1836 filed late last week seeks to remove the requirement for cities and counties to publish their public notices in newspapers and allow them to post the public notices on their respective websites," the Arkansas Press Association reports in its Arkansas Publisher Weekly.

The measure comes after a host of other bills that are picking away at the state's Freedom of Information Act, which celebrated its 50th anniversary on Feb. 14.

APA Executive Director Tom Larimer said in his column that the language of HB 1836 has been introduced before and the arguments against it are still the same: "Internet connectivity remains sparse in large portions of the state. Posting these public notices to a web site would disenfranchise a large chunk of Arkansas’ population." He added, "If the goal is to put public notices online, they are already online."

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Karilyn Brown of Sherwood, is expected to be discussed on the House City, County and Local Affairs Committee agenda next week, APA reports. Local governments around the country are asking state legislatures to roll back public-notice requirements, arguing that the move would save money. Newspapers argue that few people read government websites.

Larimer asks, is the "small savings" from removing public notices in newspapers "worth the loss of a transparent government?" Because the notices are already online at no charge, “They’re not going to find a better bargain.”

Sunshine Week, which celebrates open government, is from March 12-18.

Trump tells community bankers he will ease regulations and make it easier to lend money

President Trump told representatives of community banks Thursday that he will "deliver regulatory changes that will make it easier for them to lend money," Michael Marois and Toluse Olorunnipa report for Bloomberg Politics. Trump told the bankers, “We must ensure access to capital. You’ll be able to loan, you’ll be able to be safe, but you’ll be able to provide the jobs that we want and all create great businesses.”

Trump called community banks "the backbone of small business in America," said they "play a vital role in helping create jobs by providing approximately half of all loans to small businesses," and "Nearly half of all private sector workers are employed by small businesses."

Bloomberg reports, "One way in which Trump favors re-regulation of financial institutions is his support for restoring the Glass-Steagall, which since the Depression had separated commercial and investment backing until its repeal under President Bill Clinton in 1999. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday that Trump remains committed to reimposing the act’s restrictions on banks, a position shared by prominent liberals."

Community banks want relief from the Dodd-Frank Act, "a sweeping overhaul of U.S. banking regulation put in place after the financial crisis of 2008,"  reports Bloomberg. "For banks with less than $50 million in assets, a 2013 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that adding two employees to handle compliance would cause nearly a third of those banks to become unprofitable."

On top of Dodd-Frank, "Persistently low interest rates have squeezed profitability from community banks’ business models: collecting more interest from borrowers than they pay for deposits," Bloomberg reports. "A slew of new regulations have also hobbled key sources of non-lending income, including the fees some banks can charge retailers and other businesses for processing card transactions. Many regional and local lenders are combining to reduce costs."

Mayor says refugee plan cost him his job; paper says it was how he presented the issue

The mayor of Rutland, Vt. (Best Places map), blames the resounding loss of his bid for a sixth term Tuesday on his support for bringing Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the town of 16,500, Wilson Ring reports for The Associated Press. Chris Louras, mayor for 10 years, got only 33 percent of the vote, losing handily to City Councilman David Allaire, who earned 51 percent. Louras had twice beaten Allaire by large margins.

Louras told reporters Wednesday, “Though I wanted to think this was not a referendum on refugee resettlement, I continue to believe, as I’ve articulated, Rutland is a microcosm of the national conversation on immigration and refugees, and ultimately it was not an election on the issues but an election based on emotions.”

"Last spring, Louras announced a plan to bring up to 100 refugees annually from Syria and Iraq to the city," AP reports. "The plan split the community, with many residents eager to greet the newcomers but with others citing concerns the refugees could be security threats or economic burdens. So far, two families, both with young children, have arrived."

In an editorial the Rutland Herald argues that the issue wasn't refugee resettlement—four of the six candidates supported it—but the way Louras presented it. "Where Louras got into trouble was in trying to couch resettlement as an economic-development opportunity for Rutland—that inviting people from afar to settle in our fair city would change the culture and lead to ethnic diversity, and that in turn would spur economic growth and enrich the lives of people who are already here. Listening to him talk, the mayor sometimes made it sound like Rutland’s bigger problem is that the city has too many jobs just waiting to be filled. That didn’t square with most people’s economic reality, and it cost Louras credibility, even among people who had no particular objection to inviting 100 or so refugees to relocate to Rutland."

The editorial continued, "The way the mayor went about it didn’t help his standing, either. Rather than engaging the community in a dialogue beforehand, by the time resettlement was rolled out a lot of people felt it was cast as a done deal, with the implicit message that you either backed the mayor or you were wrong. That’s hardly a recipe for getting yourself re-elected, and it ignored the fact that not everyone who questioned the wisdom of the program, or the lack of transparency in the process, was a raving xenophobe."

Farm Foundation Forum on NAFTA's future Tues.

The topic of the next Farm Foundation Forum, on Tuesday, is "The Future of the North American Free Trade Agreement." Scheduled from 9-11 a.m. ET, the forum will be held at the National Press Club in Washington. It will be available via audiocast and archived on the Farm Foundation website.

Panel members will include: Bob Stallman, a Texas farmer and former president of the American Farm Bureau Federation; Melissa San Miguel, senior director of global strategies for the Grocery Manufacturers Association; and Linda Dempsey, vice president of international economic affairs with the National Association of Manufacturers.

There is no fee to participate, but registration is requested. Register here if you plan to attend in person; register here for the live audiocast.

April 14 deadline for proposals to present at National Forum to Advance Rural Education

The deadline to submit a proposal to present at the 2017 National Forum to Advance Rural Education is April 14. The theme of this year's forum, which will be held from Oct. 12-14 in Columbus, Ohio, is "Growing Success." The forum "will focus on connecting education and work, strengthening the profession, and supporting the whole child," says a release from Battelle for Kids, which is co-hosting the event with the National Rural Education Association.

"More than 40 percent of all American schools are in rural areas, and close to one third of all students in the country attend rural schools," said Battelle for Kids. "For most rural school districts in this country, collaboration is not a choice, it is a necessity. Collaboration helps to elevate the voice of rural districts, uplift and empower isolated educators, administrators, and students, and leverage limited resources to tackle big issues. This event brings hundreds of rural education leaders and practitioners together to learn, network, and collaborate on the topics at the forefront of rural education."

Journalists must adapt to social-media era but can do it without changing principles, API head says

Tom Rosenstiel spoke to an audience at the University of Kentucky Wednesday.

Journalism needs to adjust to the new era of social media, and it can do that without changing its essential principles, but the public needs to help, the executive director of the American Press Institute said Wednesday at the University of Kentucky.

Tom Rosenstiel, co-author of The Elements of Journalism: What News People Need to Know and the Public Should Expect, spoke at the latest installment of the UK School of Journalism and Media's "Challenges to Journalism" series.

Using the book as a template, Rosenstiel discussed how elements and principles of journalism have been affected by social media and other technologies, and how journalists can adapt. But the Elements also say that "Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news,: and he said the role of citizens as consumers of journalism "probably is the issue that has exploded the most."

"In effect we are our own editors" as we use social media, Rosenstiel said, but Facebook is programmed to give us information that its algorithms suggest interest us, which may steer us away from views contrary to our own. "Whether we are in a filter bubble is dependent on us."

Readers, listeners and viewers once used their judgments about news sources as a filter for news, but on social media that branding is largely lost, and the news becomes "atomized," story by story, Rosenstiel said, with little emphasis on the original source.

Social media thus lack an essential element of journalism, the "discipline of verification." Rosenstiel explained that the discipline calls for "objectivity of method, not neutrality," because individuals cannot be expected to be truly objective.

The objectivity of method, driven by what journalist-philosopher Walter Lippmann called "a scientific spirit . . . is actually the antidote to fake news," Rosenstiel said. "We are in the era of show-me news: 'Show me why I should trust you.'" He said that is done by making the evidence in a story, and the sources for it, clear and transparent. "The key element is the reporting and the evidence, not a beautiful narrative."

The elements or principles that journalists "must maintain an independence from those they cover" and be "an independent monitor of power" are "under siege from various pressures," Rosenstiel said, including the proliferation of news outlets that are more about "the journalism of affirmation" of news consumers' beliefs. "Audiences like to see news they agree with."

Journalists need to understand that in many cases they are no longer the gatekeepers for information, but "annotators of information we've already heard," Rosenstiel said, which makes it more important for them to check facts, knock down rumors and help readers make sense of events, trends and issues. He also said it's more important than ever to put labels like "analysis" on stories that go beyond the facts.

Rosenstiel said "the area of greatest challenge" for journalism may be its need to "provide a forum for public criticism and compromise," because the "commenting media" are growing while "the reportorial media" are shrinking and looking for more revenue from the audience to make up for less advertising.

That is making a real difference in many states and localities, as congressional delegations and local governments and get less coverage, Rosenstiel said. "We often overlook the importance of reporters simply showing up," he said. "Bad things happen when people in power think they're not being watched."

How about other Elements of Journalism?

• "Its first loyalty is to citizens:" As news organizations' finances have eroded, its loyalty to citizens has been weakened, with more use of sponsored content, and "This is something we need to worry about," Rosenstiel said.
• "Make the significant interesting and relevant:" It's more important to listen to the audience, Rosenstiel said, because the web and economics are moving the market away from "publications of record" to "publications of interest." The web rewards specialization, not the old model of general-interest stories, so local publications "need to decide the few things they need to get better at." One encouraging finding is that people will still read long stories, especially at night and on mobile devices, he said. 
• "Keep the news comprehensive and proportional:" With fewer resources, we "need to think about comprehensiveness within topic," Rosenstiel said, keeping in mind that "The function of news is to create community knowledge."
• Journalists should "exercise personal conscience:" Rosenstiel said research shows that the expansion of news outlets have drawn conservatives out of traditional newsrooms, so editors and publishers need to think about ideological, class and cultural diversity.

Here's a video of the hour-long presentation:

Are ethics violations against Sonny Perdue holding up Senate confirmation hearing for ag secretary?

Sonny Perdue and his wife Mary introducing then Indiana
 Gov. Mike Pence in August in Perry, Ga.
 (Macon Telegraph photo by Woody Marshall)

One of the reasons for the delay in a Senate confirmation hearing for former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue for agriculture secretary could be prior conflicts of interest leveled against Perdue while he was governor, Eric Lipton and Steve Eder report for The New York Times. The hearing has been delayed while a background check is completed. President Trump picked Perdue for the position six weeks ago, but it is one of the few Cabinet positions yet to have a confirmation hearing scheduled.

Perdue, who took an ethics pledge when elected governor, was accused of failing to honor the pledge during his eight years as governor, reports the Times. "The criticism centers on the fact that, as Trump has, he continued to own or help run his family business ventures—four farming-related companies—while serving as governor." Perdue was governor from 2003-11.

While in office, 13 complaints were "filed against Perdue with the State Ethics Commission, which on two occasions ruled that the governor had violated state ethics laws," reports the Times. "The commission took the unusual step of fining Perdue while he was governor. There were numerous other questions, including some about the role of Perdue’s personal lawyer—also a state legislator—in pushing a bill through the legislature that included a special provision that gave Perdue $100,000 in state tax relief."

"And, when his tenure as governor was coming to a close, Perdue met with Georgia officials who oversee the state’s ports to discuss use of a terminal for a family business, according to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution," reports the Times. "Soon after he left office, in fact, he opened a new company that specialized in exporting products through Savannah."

Disputed Alaskan Pebble Mine could find renewed hope under Trump, but still faces challenges

New York Times map; mine site lies in two watersheds

The controversial Pebble Mine project in Alaska that has been in the works for years, but until recently was thought to be all but dead, might now have a chance at a comeback with Donald Trump in the White House, Tim Sohn reports for The New Yorker. In 2014 Northern Dynasty Minerals, a Canadian mining company, marked the location of about 1,300 exploratory holes revealing huge deposits of copper, gold, and molybdenum worth potentially hundreds of billions of dollars.

The project, located "right near the headwaters of some of Bristol Bay’s major salmon rivers," has "encountered stiff opposition from local fishermen, Alaskan Native groups, and their environmental and political allies around the country," Sohn writes. "Early last year, the combination of bad PR, spooked investors, declining copper prices, logistical and infrastructural challenges, unresolved court battles, and a proposed intervention by the Environmental Protection Agency seemed to have rendered Pebble an extreme long shot. Northern Dynasty’s stock, worth twenty-one dollars a share five years earlier, bottomed out at twenty-one cents."

"On Nov. 9, the day after Donald Trump won, Northern Dynasty’s share price jumped twenty-five per cent; by early February of this year, it had more than quadrupled in value," Sohn writes. "Soon the company was being touted as a virtual sure thing in investor newsletters and chat rooms—'Trump’s gold' became a popular refrain." While "Republicans in Congress have long seen Pebble as a casualty of the EPA’s regulatory overreach, the Trump Administration has made no public statements concerning the mine, nor has it had any direct contact with Northern Dynasty."

“Even if EPA stands down and a major investor comes on board, the mine still faces a daunting level of local activism and opposition," Sohn writes. Tim Bristol, the executive director of the Alaskan conservation group SalmonState, told him, “Pebble does not have an EPA problem. They have an Alaska problem. It’s the development project that Alaskans love to hate.”

The mine is unpopular in Alaska, and only getting more so, Sohn writes. Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, "has spoken out against the mine, and the GOP-dominated state legislature has grown increasingly skeptical—a particularly important development, since a 2014 ballot measure, supported by two-thirds of voters, gave it veto power over any mine proposal in Bristol Bay."

Experts say Trump's immigration policy is why illegal border crossings were down in February

The number of undocumented immigrants caught in February trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico dropped significantly, suggesting that President Trump's tough immigration stance may already be having a positive impact on illegal border crossings, Nicholas Kulish and Fernanda Santos report for The New York Times.

Data from Customs and Border Protection shows that about 840 people were stopped per day in February, down 39 percent from January and 36 percent from February 2016, reports the Times. Typically the number of apprehensions increases in February as the temperature in the Southwestern U.S. begins to rise.

"The flow of people across the southern border has long depended on many factors, including the economy and violence in their home countries, and even the weather," reports the Times. "But chief among them is America’s own immigration policy, and experts said they were not surprised to see a slowdown even before Trump’s executive orders on immigration have taken full effect or his signature wall has been built." Faye Hipsman, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told the Times, “Deterrence through perception is central to these executive orders. Even floating the possibility of expanding detention at the border makes somebody less likely to come.”

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that favors more limits on immigration, "said all signs pointed to a decline in migration similar to that seen after the Reagan administration’s sweeping immigration reform law of 1986," reports the Times.

Krikorian told the Times, “The talk of tougher enforcement can, in fact, lead to reductions in the flow, but only for a short period of time if the words aren’t backed up with action." He said during the Reagan years “the promises of tougher enforcement didn’t exactly pan out.”

$50 million greenhouse on reclaimed mining land in Ky. could help boost Appalachia economy

Efforts have been made in Appalachian to revitalize local economies through means other than coal. One such project is a planned $50 million high-tech greenhouse on 70 acres of reclaimed mining land in Eastern Kentucky that could provide up to 130 full-time jobs, Jere Downs reports for The Courier-Journal in Louisville. The greenhouse would be located in Pikeville, Ky. (Best Places map) which has an unemployment rate of 8.7 percent, well above the state average of 4.5 percent.

The greenhouse "would grow tomatoes, bell peppers and other vegetables under glass," said AppHarvet CEO Jonathan Webb, who said he is raising funding from angel investors and expects to break ground in June, Downs writes. The project would include a 45-acre hydroponic greenhouse. "Covering two million square feet, the greenhouse can produce 2.6 million pounds of vegetables annually."

AppHarvest CEO Jonathan Webb scouts
land for the greenhouse (AppHarvest photo)

The greenhouse has gotten the support of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, who said, "This project presents a fantastic opportunity to help our Appalachian region continue its rejuvenation," Downs writes. The project also has received "preliminary approval for $2.5 million in state tax incentives from the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority."

Federal program in Ariz. helps rehabilitate inmates by having them train wild horses for adoption

Inmate Rick Kline works in the program.
(Cronkite News photo by Blake Hemmel)

A federally funded program in Arizona allows inmates and wild horses to get a second chance, Shania Alba, of Cronkite News, reports for a story that appears on the Daily Yonder. Inmates at the Arizona State Prison in Florence, about 50 miles southeast of Phoenix, are caring for and training wild horses to prepare them for adoption in the hopes of reducing the wild horse population and prevent overgrazing. The program is funded and run by the Bureau of Land Management and annually provides "about 120 wild horses and burros for adoption."

Best Places map

"First, the animals need to be domesticated after they’re transferred from a holding facility. Inmates train and care for the horses and burros for three or four months at the prison," Alba writes. "Inmate 'handlers' start 'rehabilitating' horses and burros every morning before the sun rises, working until the early afternoon over several weeks to get the animals used to people. The interaction with the animals is a series of steps, moving from teaching basic commands such as getting the horse to stand still during grooming to placing saddles and harnesses on them, then allowing people to ride them."

The program has not only helped to rehabilitate wild horses, but prisoners as well, Alba writes. Randy Helm, a BLM-appointed supervisor, "said recidivism is low, with only two prisoners in the program having returned to the Florence facility over five years."

Warmer winter temperatures in Michigan causing problems among state's maple syrup producers

Maple syrup released into the final stage of the
process (Detroit Free Press photo by Elaine Cromie) 

An unusually warm winter in Michigan is wrecking havoc on the state's multi-million dollar maple syrup business, Ken Palmer and Ann Zaniewski report for the Lansing State Journal and Detroit Free Press. Warmer weather has shortened the season, making it difficult for maple sap producers to decide on the best time to tap trees. If they do it too early they "miss the best flows if conditions are better later." If they wait too long they could miss the best sap. "Once trees start budding, the quality of the sap quickly declines."

As a result of the warmer winter, "some producers are collecting less sap than in previous years, or having to use more to make the same amount of maple syrup," Palmer and Zaniewski write. Temperatures in Michigan in February were well above normal, averaging in the high 30s for most of the state for the month, with record-breaking temperatures reaching in the 60s and 70s on same days. "Ideal weather for sap flow is when temperatures are below freezing at nighttime and above freezing in the 30s and 40s during the day. When the weather is well above freezing both day and night, the sap can run to tops of the trees."

Michigan produced between 90,000 to 148,000 gallons a year over the past four years, Palmer and Zaniewski write. "The season typically lasts four to six weeks. March is usually the sweet spot. This year, some producers in southern Michigan tapped as early as late January."

County-level data finds that many rural areas would be hurt most by GOP health-insurance plan

Analysts say House Republicans' bill to replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could cost millions of people to lose health insurance and would largely hurt people in areas where coverage is high, predominately rural areas where there are few hospitals or few insurers, Abby Goodnough and Reed Abelson report for The New York Times.

While official numbers are not available on the number of people who would lose coverage, "a report from Standard & Poor’s estimated that two million to four million people would drop out of the individual insurance market, largely because people in their 50s and early 60s—those too young to qualify for Medicare—would face higher costs," reports the Times. "Other analysts, including those at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, have estimated larger coverage losses." (Kaiser Family Foundation county map of tax credits under ACA vs. the American Health Care Act in 2020. Blue areas are where tax credits are smaller under House plan. For an interactive version click here)

"Starting in 2020, the plan would do away with the current system of providing premium subsidies based on people’s income and the cost of insurance where they live. Instead, it would provide tax credits of $2,000 to $4,000 per year based on their age," reports the Times. "But the credits would not cover nearly as much of the cost of premiums as the current subsidies do, at least for the type of comprehensive coverage that the Affordable Care Act requires, analysts said. For many people, that could mean the difference between keeping coverage under the new system and having to give it up."

"The proposal would also eliminate another important element of the subsidies, the financial assistance available for low-income people with their out-of-pocket costs, such as deductibles and co-payments," reports the Times. "While many of the plans now sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces have large deductibles, the cost-sharing reductions available protect lower-income people from medical bills that could otherwise run into the thousands of dollars. Analysts say the lack of out-of-pocket assistance is likely to make any plan much less attractive to low-income people."

"Legislation could also fundamentally weaken the insurance market by doing away with the so-called individual mandate, which requires people to have coverage or pay a tax penalty," reports the Times. "While it would be replaced by a 30 percent surcharge when someone buys a policy after dropping coverage, the surcharge could be weaker than the current mandate, and younger people might continue to gamble on not having coverage until they get sick. The result, said Donald H. Taylor Jr., a health policy professor at Duke University, is that people who buy coverage are sicker, causing the cost of premiums to soar."

EPA budget cuts could lead to longer delays in pesticides being approved

Proposed budget and employee cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency could have the opposite effect of aligning with the Trump Administration's goal of reducing regulatory burdens, Marc Heller reports for Greenwire. Cutting EPA's budget by 25 percent and its employees by 20 percent would mean fewer employees, leading to delays in actions such as pesticide approvals that farmers and agribusinesses are anxiously waiting on.

"All registered pesticides are required under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act to undergo reviews by EPA every 15 years," Heller writes. "As of last year, the agency reported more than 700 registration review cases involving more than 1,000 active ingredients; more than 500 cases were in 'active review.' New chemicals undergo extensive reviews by the agency before they can be registered, as well."

Ethan Mathews, director of public policy for the National Corn Growers Association, which represents 40,000 farmers nationwide, says reviews of new pesticides can take as long as 11 years, Heller writes. Beau Greenwood, executive vice president of government relations and public affairs at CropLife America, a trade association for pesticide-makers and distributors, said EPA "already doesn't have enough employees to carry out registration reviews in a timely manner. He said his organization has visited with EPA staff and doesn't have a clear idea what the administration plans but that sticking to the Trump team's mantra of more efficient regulation will be the selling point for staving off cuts." (Read more)

Arkansas governor wants to lower Medicaid eligibility, says plan can serve as national model

Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson is seeking to lower eligibility for Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to 100 percent of the federal poverty line—it is currently 138 percent—which would move about 60,000 Arkansas residents, many of them rural, to the subsidized insurance marketplace, Maggie McNeary reports for Arkansas Online. In Arkansas, which was one of the few southern states that expanded Medicaid, more than 300,000 people are on the program.

Hutchinson "said this new cap would ensure that the people affected would retain their coverage, save money for the state and encourage personal responsibility," McNeary writes. He "said he believes the change brought about by the waivers is the same direction national health care will take" and that Arkansas can serve as a model for other states and the federal government. Hutchinson also wants to add a work requirement.

A study published in January in The Journal of Rural Health found that Medicaid expansion greatly increased access to health care for Americans, especially in rural areas. (Kaiser Family Foundation map: Medicaid expansion states)

GOP blames Obama for coal's downfall, but he had best idea to revive Appalachia, says Ky. writer

Repealing the Obama administration's Stream Protection Rule has yet to create any new coal jobs and likely won't do much to revive the industry in the future, James Higdon, author and son of a Kentucky Republican state senator, writes for Politico Magazine. "Tyler White, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, couldn’t say how many jobs he thought the repeal of the rule would create, 'but I can tell you that it definitely will help stop the bleeding.'”

Higdon writes, "Even if every one of Obama’s environmental regulations—the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards; the Cross State Air Pollution Rule; the Coal Ash Rule; the Effluent Limitations Guidelines for wastewater discharge, and section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act —were all struck down tomorrow, the effect on jobs in Appalachia would still be negligible. That’s because global demand for coal is slowing, and coal from Wyoming costs a fraction of the coal from Appalachia. Even without the Stream Protection Rule, the Appalachian economy still needs to be remade."

While Republicans have blamed Obama for coal's downfall, one of the best ideas to revive the industry was actually proposed by his administration, Higdon writes. "As part of the 2016 budget, the Obama White House created something called the POWER Plus plan," which "proposed converting $1 billion from the Abandoned Mine Lands fund—a pot of money that had been growing since the Carter administration—into economic-development grants to the states with the most abandoned mines. For Kentucky alone, that would mean $20 million a year for five years. The money would likely have gone to promote other businesses sectors like manufacturing and tourism and to retrain miners for new jobs like writing computer code."

"This potential windfall was met with disinterest, if not skepticism, in the Republican-controlled Congress," Higdon writes. Jason Walsh, a senior policy advisor at the Domestic Policy Council in Obama’s White House who helped craft the plan, told him, “When we included the proposal, no Republican member of Congress was willing to touch it at first."

Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican who represents most of Eastern Kentucky, and who has been a strong critic of Obama, saw Obama's plan as a good opportunity to revive coal communities and introduced it as the RECLAIM Act to the House in 2016—"a stand-alone bill to convert $1 billion of the Abandoned Mine Lands into economic development grants for hard-hit Appalachian areas," Higdon writes. It never went anywhere and now "it remains an open question whether this Congress will finally find a productive use for that $1 billion that is sitting largely untouched in the federal coffers."

Georgia lawmakers create council to focus on rural issues and concerns

Georgia lawmakers have created a council that will concentrate specifically on rural issues and concerns, Maggie Lee reports for The Telegraph in Macon, Ga. The House Rural Development Council will consist of a a group of 15 lawmakers selected by Republican House Speaker David Ralston, from rural Blue Ridge, Ga. He told Lee, “I want this council to look at the big picture and recommend legislative actions that can empower our rural areas. I am not interested in government creating jobs. Rather, I want to create an environment in which private enterprise can create jobs in rural Georgia.”

Ralston in January called for a "rural-development initiative" in response to rural concerns, such as shuttered businesses, hospitals that have closed or are financially struggling, poor internet connections, young people migrating to cities and never coming back and schools that don't offer all the classes students need to get into the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech, Lee wrote in a previous story. Of the 80 rural hospitals that have closed since 2010, six are in Georgia. That places the state third behind Texas and Tennessee.