Rural Texans file federal lawsuit against Hill Country county that banned books and fired a librarian

As The Rural Blog recently shared, a rural Texas county has been in an uproar since last fall, when conservative activists got local leaders to censor library books and fire a librarian who objected to it. What happened next illustrates how similar efforts to ban books could go.

"A citizens group in Llano County, Tex., has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that county officials violated their constitutional rights when they unilaterally removed 'award-winning books' from the public libraries 'because they disagree with the ideas within them,'" Annie Gowen reports for The Washington Post. "In the 31-page filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio, a group of anti-censorship activists say that county officials violated the First Amendment when they removed the books, and that they did so again when they 'permanently terminated access to over 17,000 digital books' they could not censor, affecting the elderly and people with disabilities who find it hard to travel to the physical library. Commissioners also voted to close library board meetings to the public, a move that also denied these citizens equal protection under the law, the suit argues."

Experts say such lawsuits will likely happen in other places that have attempted to ban books on the basis of LGBTQ or racial content. Some rural residents may feel a lawsuit is the only recourse possible when other actions at the local level don't bring change. Leila Green Little, a board member for the Llano library system's fundraising group, told Gowen a lawsuit was necessary "because we had no other remaining avenue to pursue change. We attended meetings, made comments, wrote letters and pleaded with the county to stop the censorship, and they never changed course."

Housing shortage triggers skyrocketing rents, but construction costs slow affordable housing projects

A housing shortage is fueling skyrocketing housing costs in rural areas and elsewhere. But rising construction costs—especially for lumber and petroleum-based products such as asphalt—make it difficult to build more housing and ease the crunch, and federal laws make it hard to apply pandemic aid to the problem, Kristian Hernandez reports for Stateline.

"For developers of market-rate apartments, [cost increases mean] charging higher rents. For those building rent-restricted projects using tax credits or other government aid, the rising costs could quash an entire project. And the construction slowdown is coming at a time when there is a desperate need to increase the nation’s supply of affordable housing," Hernandez reports. "The stock of low-cost rentals has been shrinking for some time: In 2019, there were 3.9 million fewer units renting for less than $600 than there were in 2011, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. The overall rental vacancy rate in the fourth quarter of 2021 was just 5.6%—the lowest figure since the mid-1980s—evidence that there is an extremely tight supply."

Average rents have gone up more than 17% in the past year, and tenants' income hasn't kept pace, and neither have government housing programs, Hernandez reports. About half of the nation's renters are paying more than the recommended limit of 30% of their income in rent, but government rental assistance has remained essentially flat for the past 20 years, according to Ingrid Ellen, director of New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

Though the federal government has allotted billions in aid for the pandemic, its rules bar the money from being used for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. LIHTC is the largest source of affordable housing financing, and has an outsized impact in poverty-stricken rural areas. "The problem is that, under the current rules, recovery funds must be spent by the end of 2026. That means the money can’t be used for long-term loans to help finance LIHTC developments," Hernandez reports. "Some state housing agencies have found a way around the restriction by mixing federal coronavirus aid and other funds ... Some agencies have been able to use recovery funds to cover up to 75% of the cost of a loan with these workarounds, but the process is complicated and adds costs to a project." A bipartisan bill would let states loan pandemic aid for LIHTC sites.

Pandemic roundup: Shots could have prevented 234K Covid-19 deaths; decade of public preschool gains erased

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts:

Before the Omicron surge began in December 2021, about one-third of Americans had been infected with the coronavirus at least once. By the time the Omicron surge had died down, that number had almost doubled, with 58% of Americans in a randomized sample showing antibodies indicating a prior infection, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. Among children ages 11 and under, 75% had infection-related antibodies, up from 44% before the surge. Read more here.

The deaths of about 234,000 American adults since June 2021 could have been prevented by timely vaccination against the coronavirus, according to a new CDC study. Nearly 1 million Americans have died from Covid-19. Read more here.

The pandemic erased a decade of gains in enrollment and state funding of public preschools, according to an annual review from Rutgers University's National Institute for Early Education Research. However, the report found that federal relief money filled the hole left by states' spending cuts during the 2020-2021 school year. Read more here.

For the past two years, Covid-19 has been the leading cause of death for American law enforcement officers. One police sergeant tells a reporter what it was like to spend 49 days in the hospital with Covid-19 and why he didn't get vaccinated. Read more here.

Landowners' growing interest in conserving their land ignites debate over property rights of heirs who might want to sell

Conservation land-trust groups across the U.S. have seen a spike in interest from landowners who want to preserve their farms and other lands from development, "but the growing interest in preserving privately held land has sparked a fierce debate between supporters who say such efforts guarantee environmental protections and critics who say they take away individual property rights," Alex Brown reports for Stateline. "A handful of states are considering expanding their conservation easement programs, which offer tax breaks to landowners in exchange for giving up development rights to their farms and natural lands. In many cases, those easements last in perpetuity, offering durable protection even when the property changes ownership."

However, "Lawmakers in several states have pushed to give officials veto power over conservation easements or to require expiration dates for the agreements. They argue that the contracts block future generations from making their own decisions about the land," Brown reports. "Other opponents argue that public money should not be used to fund conservation on private land. They claim that efforts to protect natural spaces will cause housing shortages in fast-growing communities and limit tax revenues for local governments. Both sides see the others’ efforts as something of a land grab. How states respond could determine the fate of tens of millions of acres."

General anti-vaccine sentiment gaining new momentum amid opposition to coronavirus vaccination for children

Opposition to requiring coronavirus vaccines for children has breathed new life into a movement to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates, or at least limit the application of such requirements.

More than 65 bills to limit or eliminate mandatory childhood vaccinations have been introduced in 25 states this year. "In Missouri, for example, legislators are considering a measure exempting private school students from vaccine requirements. In Louisiana, a bill in the House would prohibit vaccinations on school property and at school-sponsored events," Sandy West reports for Kaiser Health News. "All states require specific childhood vaccinations for illnesses such as polio, measles, and mumps, but exemptions vary. They all allow exemptions for people with medical concerns, 44 states allow religious exemptions, and 15 allow philosophical exemptions, according to 2021 data from the National Conference of State Legislatures."

Anti-vaccine activism isn't new, but public-health experts say the movement has gained ground amid fears surrounding the coronavirus vaccine. Anti-vaccine sentiment once relied on long-debunked theories that vaccines cause autism, but in recent years "the movement began to shift its focus to align more with the populist ideology of 'individual freedoms' put forward by Second Amendment advocates and the tea party," West reports.

That dovetails with a rising tide of conservative activists who have sought to influence policy in libraries, county governments and school boards to statehouses, under the banner of liberty.

However, general anti-vaccine efforts aren't entirely grassroots. The similarity of anti-vaccine bills from state to state "raises red flags to vaccine advocates because it suggests that a coordinated effort to dismantle vaccine requirements and public-health infrastructure is underway," one expert told West.

It's unclear how much traction anti-vaccine-mandate bills will get. Most people support childhood vaccine mandates, but the issue is increasingly getting tangled up in the political minefield surrounding coronavirus vaccinations. Some politicians say they're hoping cooler heads will prevail.

Kansas state Rep. John Eplee, a Republican and family physician, said he voted against a state mask mandate in hope of defusing tensions, but supports childhood vaccination mandates. "While Eplee hopes the 'passions' inflamed by Covid die down with distance from the early days of the pandemic, he’s concerned that voters have forgotten the damage done by vaccine-controllable diseases, making them susceptible to disinformation from determined anti-vaccine activists and the politicians among their ranks," West reports.

"I hate to see human nature play out like that," Eplee told West. "But if people are vocal enough and loud enough, they can swing enough votes to change the world in a not-so-good way for public health and vaccinations."

Registration is open for free virtual conference May 23-24 on rural placemaking, which improves community structure

The Agriculture Department's Rural Development arm and the University of Kentucky's Community and Economic Development Initiative of Kentucky are inviting rural stakeholders all over the nation to Placemaking in Small & Rural Communities, a free virtual conference on May 23-24.

From the website: "Placemaking is a collaborative process among public, private, philanthropic and community partners to strategically improve the social, cultural, and economic structure of a community. The 2022 Rural Placemaking Conference aims to showcase effective placemaking strategies for rural areas, introduce attendees to placemaking resources and tools, and connect them to placemaking experts and potential funders."

The conference will offer online tracks on the following topics:

• Initiating Place
• Public Spaces & Gathering Places
• Community Cultural Planning & Assessments
• Cross-Sector Engagement

Xochitl Torres Small, USDA undersecretary for Rural Development, will be the keynote speaker. Click here for a complete list of speakers and click here for more information or to register.

Friday webinar will discuss the accuracy of the 2020 census, an issue in many rural areas, and how to best use its data

The National Conference of State Legislatures will host a free webinar at 2 p.m. ET Friday, April 29 to discuss how stakeholders can best use data from the 2020 census and to discuss its accuracy, which has implications for many rural areas.

From the website: "With the 2020 census results out, many are eager to use the data—and to assess its accuracy. The U.S. Census Bureau has begun releasing its own data-quality evaluations, with national results from the 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey and the 2020 Demographic Analysis estimates. Data users outside the bureau are looking at quality, too. In this webinar, we’ll discuss this decade’s census data quality and how it compares with that of previous decades, what additional analyses are coming from inside and outside the bureau, and what questions remain."

Wendy Underhill, NCSL's director of the elections and redistricting program, will moderate a panel of speakers that will include:

• Tim Kennel, assistant division chief for statistical methods, Census Bureau
• Teresa Sullivan, chair, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Panel to Evaluate the Quality of the 2020 Census
• Dr. William O'Hare, president, O'Hare Data and Demographic Services LLC

Click here for more information or to register.

Rural Iowa journalist opines that Biden and the Democrats have done much for rural America and should say so

President Biden's name is mud in much of rural America, but he has done more for such places in two years than former President Trump did in four, writes one journalist in rural Iowa. "The rural economy is stronger, wages are higher and infrastructure projects are popping up all over," Iowa radio news director Robert Leonard writes in The New York Times. "Biden and his fellow Democrats are responsible for many of the improvements and for bringing back a sense of stability. For the midterms, they should run on these successes — the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill. And they should run on why they have worked: Democrats should run on Democratic values."

The recent infrastructure bill made a point of directing funding to rural areas, and it's "so obviously beneficial to the communities that even Republicans who voted against it are taking credit," Leonard writes. He lists other things the administration has done (or undone) to help rural areas, such as promoting competition among meatpackers.

But all that seems unlikely to generate enough goodwill to help Democrats this fall. "When it comes to the midterms, the problem is not really about Mr. Biden himself but about long-running trends, and the only way to alter those trends is to change the perception of Democrats on the national level," Leonard writes. "Too often, Democrats leave it to Republicans to set the agenda and frame issues, or blame conservative media."

Instead, he writes, "Democrats should be proud of what the party has been and is — the party of Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare, of greater opportunity for more and more Americans — and what it is and what it stands for, and their values: for smart government being part of the solution, not the problem; for health care as a right, not a privilege; for clean water and air and effective climate solutions; for taxation that doesn’t favor the rich; for equal opportunity for all; for life chances and opportunities that aren’t determined by one’s ZIP code, race, gender, faith, sexual orientation or gender identity. These are Democratic values. They can play everywhere, including in rural America. Run on those."

Leonard is news director of KNIA and KRLS, serving Knoxville, Pella and Indianola, and author of Deep Midwest: Midwestern Explorations.

School probe wins Arkansas weekly Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism from Harvard's Nieman Foundation

Madison County Record photo by Shannon Hahn

The Madison County Record, a rural Arkansas weekly with a staff of five, beat out The Washington Post and a collaboration of the Miami Herald and ProPublica to win the 2021 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism from Harvard University's Nieman Foundation.

The Record won for its "unflinching investigation . . . into attempts by the Huntsville, Ark., school board to cover up sexual assault allegations by junior high school basketball players," said the award announcement. The paper, which has a circulation of 4,000, "found that the local school board members sought to conceal not only the assault allegations but also their decision to reduce the recommended punishment for some students and to throw out punishment for others."

The package is called "Title IX," after the federal civil-rights law that prohibits excluding Americans from educational programs on the basis of sex. The Record began its investigation after concerned parents shared Title IX documents with the paper because they worried the district wouldn't be transparent in its review of the assaults. The paper investigated via interviews and records requests, and turned down other papers' offers of partnership in order to protect sources' anonymity.

Huntsville in Madison County
(Wikipedia map)

When the school district tried to get a gag order to prevent sources from speaking to the paper, The Record hired legal counsel and got a favorable ruling. "The reporters persisted in their investigation despite public backlash, a loss of advertising, and letters and social media comments that questioned their integrity and attacked their decision to print the stories," the Nieman Foundation reports. "Due to the attention The Record’s reporting brought to the school board, in February 2022, 19 people filed to run for seven school board seats. In comparison, no one filed during the last school board election. The Huntsville School District also admitted to several FOIA violations and a district judge ordered board members to undergo FOIA training."

One Taylor Award judge, USA Today investigative reporter Pat Beall, praised The Record: "This small paper was punching far, far above its weight class, from its initial decision to publish stories critical of the community’s popular basketball team to its willingness to push back on violations of public-meeting laws. This strong, impactful series cannot be read outside the context of how the fairness and accuracy of these stories, published by a family-owned, third-generation newspaper in a small community where school basketball is king, would have been challenged in ways no national or major regional news organization would have experienced. These stories allowed the voices of young victims to eloquently rebut the adults’ attempts to dismiss the abuse."

Wall Street Journal video explains many reasons why fertilizer prices are so high and might go higher in 2023

The Wall Street Journal has a new video that clearly lays out the reasons for today's record fertilizer prices, how that affects agriculture and food prices worldwide, and why the cost could go higher.

An array of global supply-chain shortages have made it more difficult and expensive to manufacture fertilizer. In 2021, China halted exports of phosphate, a key ingredient. In December, the U.S. and the European Union imposed trade sanctions on Belarus, the world's third-largest potash producer, for alleged human-rights violations. Those and other trade restrictions involving Russia, Turkey, and Egypt slowed global exports. The U.S. imports nearly all of its potash—83% from Canada—but residents near at least one potential mining site in the U.S. have rebuffed the idea, Grist reports.

Recent trade sanctions on Russia have worsened the strain, since Russia is the world's largest fertilizer exporter and one of the top five potash producers. Even countries without sanctions against Russia must pay sky-high prices to insure the vessels carrying potash or fertilizer, since the war makes transportation much riskier. Meanwhile, "Rising natural gas prices have prompted some European factories to scale back fertilizer production," the WSJ reports. "Natural gas is another major Russian export and a key ingredient in making nitrogen-based fertilizer."

That all makes fertilizer nearly three times more expensive for American farmers as it was in early 2021, Joel Brinkmeyer, CEO of the Agribusiness Association of Iowa, told the WSJ. Farmers operate on tight profit margins, and fertilizer is already one of their biggest expenses. Higher costs get passed on to buyers such as grocery chains and animal-feed companies, and meat gets costlier.

Some farmers have delayed planting in hope fertilizer prices will fall, but later harvests could create more supply-chain snags. Some have cut back on fertilizer use; that could lower crop yields. Some are planting crops that need less fertilizer, such as soybeans, not corn. Some are considering alternatives to such as biologicals, natural fertilizers with microorganisms that boost soil fertility, but most aren't willing to alter such a basic production factor without good hope of better results.

The worst-case scenario, Brinkmeyer said, is that the shortage causes widespread shortages of crops and feed: "If we don't produce the crops, we can't probably produce the livestock and the poultry, and we get into actual food challenges in the U.S., and that would be a much, much greater concern than what we have today."

Bitcoin mining booms in some rural areas, thanks to ban on it in China, but locals complain about noise, few jobs

Blockware Mining's cryptocurrency mine at Paducah, Kentucky (Lexington Herald-Leader photo by Ryan C. Hermens)

In the past year or so, "Companies have moved thousands of specialized computers into Kentucky to 'mine' for bitcoin, a cryptocurrency — or virtual currency — sometimes referred to as digital gold. Critics say it’s bad for the environment and produces few jobs," rural Kentucky reporter Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Here is a more in-depth primer about bitcoin mining, but essentially, shoe box-sized computers "earn" bitcoin by being the first to find the correct answer to complex calculations, which are aimed at preventing counterfeiting and stealing. But all that "mining" computation, and the massive fans needed to keep computers from overheating, is noisy and takes a lot of electricity. An official in southeastern Kentucky's Harlan County, for example, told Estep that a local project will use as much power as eight Walmart supercenters.

Cheap electricity in Kentucky, about 10% lower than the national average, has made the state attractive to bitcoin miners. "Kentucky had 18.7 percent of the collective computing power in the U.S devoted to bitcoin mining as of last October, according to Foundry, a company that operates a large bitcoin mining pool, CNBC said in a story. That was second only to New York, with 19.9 percent of the computing power. Georgia was next at 17.3 percent and Texas was home to 14 percent of the computing power, called hashrate," Estep reports. "Companies have set up racks of mining rigs on shelves in industrial buildings in the western end of the state, at sites left empty when coal mines shut down in Eastern Kentucky, even in shipping containers to get up and running as quickly as possible." 

Kentucky legislators passed two tax breaks in 2021 meant to attract bitcoin miners, but the industry is controversial: "Some people don’t like the idea of forgoing tax revenue from cryptocurrency miners — or other companies, for that matter — while other needs in Kentucky aren’t well-funded; others see echoes of coal mining in cryptocurrency mining, with the profits going to out-of-state corporations," Estep reports. Also, though bitcoin mining creates construction and set-up jobs, the operations only provide a handful of permanent jobs after the mine is up and running.

One example in East Tennessee shows what happens when the noise of bitcoin mining inspires buyer's remorse, Kevin Williams reports for The Washington Post. In the rural community of Limestone, a bitcoin mining plant opened up last April. The town initially welcomed the plant and hoped for more jobs and an economic boost. Now residents and local officials say the mine is sometimes as loud as a jet engine. The county has filed suit against the company and the local electricity provider that owns the land the mine sits on, and county commissioners have blocked attempts to open a second mine.

"Objections from local residents have complicated prospects for cryptocurrency mining in Appalachia — despite cheap land, plentiful power and utility companies hungry for additional revenue streams to replace the manufacturing customers that have been leaving for decades," Williams reports.

About two-thirds of the world's bitcoin mines were in China until its government banned it last year, citing bitcoin's price volatility as a threat to citizens' assets and the nation's overall financial stability, Estep reports. Similar concerns prompted President Biden to order a review of the cryptocurrency industry, but in the meantime bitcoin mining operations have been increasingly popular in the U.S.

Rural Midwestern bankers say local economies thrive, but predict economic downturn with little impact from E15 sales

Creighton University chart compares current month to last month and year ago; click here to download it and chart below.

An April survey of rural bankers in 10 Midwestern states that rely on agriculture and energy showed still-growing local economies amid deepening concerns about the near future. The index surveys bankers in about 200 rural communities with an average population of 1,300 in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

The overall area economic index fell to a still-positive 62.0 from 65.4 in March; above 50 is growth-positive. Farmland prices are still soaring, home sales are up, retail sales are growing and hiring is up, bankers said.

"The region recorded a 34% gain in farm commodity prices over the past 12 months, but low short-term interest rates and healthy farm income have underpinned the Rural Mainstreet Economy," writes Creighton University economist Ernie Goss, who compiles the index.

However, the loan-volume index fell from 61.9 in March to 51.9 in April, and the confidence index, which predicts the area economy six months from now, dropped from 54 in March to 39.1. Most bankers surveyed (56.5%) believed President Biden's decision to allow the sale of E15 fuel (which has more ethanol) this summer would have little or no impact on their economies, while 39.1% believed it would have a positive effect and 4.4% believed it would have a negative effect.

The vast majority of bankers (91.7%) predicted that the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee will raise the interest rate by 0.5 percentage points at its next meeting, and 8.3% said the committee will raise the rate by 0.25 points. None predicted the rate would remain unchanged.

Thursday, April 28 webinar will show how to read USDA's baseline agricultural projections for the next decade

The Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service provides critical data products, from the Farm Income Forecast to international crop trade trends, to poverty and hunger data. A new series of training webinars will teach you how to find them, their significance, and how to use them. The next one, at 1 p.m. ET Thursday, April 28, covers how to interpret baseline agricultural projections. From its page:

"The USDA Interagency Agricultural Projections Committee develops long-term agricultural projections, also referred to as 'baseline' projections, that provide a scenario for the U.S. farm sector and global trade for the next 10 years. Projections cover agricultural commodities, agricultural trade, and aggregate indicators of each sector (such as farm income). The projections identify major forces and uncertainties affecting future agricultural markets; prospects for global long-term economic growth, consumption, and trade; and future price trends and trade flows of major farm commodities. In this webinar, ERS agricultural economist Matthew Miller will discuss how the projections are made and used, provide highlights from the recent projections, and demonstrate how to find the data on the ERS website.

Click here for more information or to register for the April 28 webinar; click here to learn more about future webinars in the series.

Hard-nosed N.M. weekly sold to execs with GOP, energy ties; they suggest it's better sold to in-staters than to a chain

UPDATE, Feb. 6, 2023: El Rito Media bought the Artesia Daily Press in southeast New Mexico from the Green family, which founded it in 1954 and had sold its other newspapers, reports newspaper broker Dirks, Van Essen & April, which handled the sale. Terms were not disclosed.

Robert B. Trapp

Nearly 66 years after his parents founded the Rio Grande Sun, Editor-Publisher Robert B. Trapp has sold the award-winning Española, N.M., weekly to a recently formed group of investors with strong ties to the oil industry and the Republican Party. 

The sale, terms of which were not disclosed, was completed April 1. In a farewell column April 8, Trapp wrote that the new owners at El Rito Media LLC have ideas for how to improve the paper, expand coverage and make it more relevant, and he wished them "good luck and good fortune." Though he recalled his 33 years with the paper fondly, he gave a hint to his reasons for selling: "No one owns a weekly newspaper. It owns you. I’ve got too many things I want to do before I die and I can’t do them and run a weekly newspaper," he wrote. "The newspaper business has become a brutal place to inform people who don’t want to be informed, tell a community’s story, give readers what they want (and don’t want, but need) and hire competent people whom you cannot afford to pay a living wage."

Española, N.M., in Rio Arriba County
(Wikipedia map)

The Sun has long been known for its steadfast fight against local corruption. The story of the hard-hitting, award-winning newspaper was captured in the 2012 documentary, The Sun Never Sets. (You can watch a clip from it here). In 2015 the Trapp family won the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. 

In his farewell column, Trapp urged readers to safeguard democracy in his absence and delivered a parting shot to those who had tried to thwart the paper: "For 66 years some readers have been reading commentary by a Trapp urging them to get involved, take action. Left to their own devices, politicians will take advantage until there is public push-back. Gather yourselves and be that force. Those who believe my father and I have been wrong about politicians, education, city and county government and the waste of taxpayer money while we’ve stagnated in growth and opportunity, this is your moment. Celebrate this day. You won’t get called out for your incompetency and ineptitude anymore."

The Santa Fe Reporter called the sale a "GOP media gambit" in the Democratic stronghold of Rio Arriba County, and noted that El Rito Media was formed last fall. "Its principals include former state Republican Party chairmen Ryan Cangiolosi and Harvey Yates Jr.," Julie Ann Grimm reports. Yates is an oil executive who served as the state's national party committeeman in 2016-20 and is president of Cibola Energy Corp. and Jalapeño Corp., which is also a named partner in the media firm. Another principal, Joseph Sanchez, is a "registered Democrat with a conservative bent" running for the state legislature this year against incumbent Roger Montoya in Española's district.

In a story published in the Sun, the new owners praised the Trapp family and the paper's "illustrious and storied history as a hard-charging, fearless weekly newspaper of record." They wrote that most papers are sold to large investment companies made of outsiders, but said El Rito is comprised entirely of New Mexicans and companies controlled by New Mexicans. 

The story introduced the new editor, Richard L. Connor, who "has overseen newspaper operations in 10 states across the country, owning and operating a number of dailies and weeklies as well as working as editor and publisher for publicly owned media companies." However, Connor was also sued by media groups in Maine and in Pennsylvania—and settled for undisclosed sums in both cases—for allegedly misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars. MaineToday Media accused him of misappropriating about $530,000 of the newspapers' funds for unauthorized salary increases for himself and personal expenses. And Wilkes-Barre Publishing LLC went after Connor for more than $250,000 in credit card charges and advances that Connor had failed to repay,

Connor said he's been to New Mexico several times and believes living there will be "a wonderful opportunity," the Sun reports. He also praised rural journalism: "The heart of journalism today is where it’s always been . . .  in smaller communities where the weekly newspaper keeps everyone not only informed, but also connected to one another."

Medical care for miners with black-lung disease will be the topic of a webinar at 11 a.m. ET Monday, April 25

The Black Lung Association will hold a free webinar at 11 a.m. ET Monday, April 25, to discuss the medical care needed by miners with black-lung disease. 

From the website: "Incidents of black lung have increased sharply over the past 20 years, especially in Appalachia. Caring for the miners afflicted with this progressive and deadly disease is challenging, meaningful, and very necessary work. Join us in April to learn from an expert panel about how the disease is contracted, how it affects the body, how it is diagnosed and treated, and how you can support ailing miners professionally and personally."

A recent study found that black-lung disease is becoming more common and more severe among younger miners in Central Appalachia because of industry shifts that have increased exposure to silica dust. At the same time, the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which helps pay for many miners' medical care, is at risk of insolvency.

The panel will feature: 

• Jerry Coleman, coal-miner and president of West Virginia's Kanawha County Black Lung Association
• Leonard Go, pulmonologist with the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University
• Susie Criss, black lung claims counselor at Cabin Creek Health
• Debbie Johnson, licensed practical nurse and black-lung program director at Bluestone Health
• Brenda Halsey Marion, registered nurse, long-time Black Lung Association organizer, and former director of New River Breathing Center

Pandemic roundup: Seniors, diabetics, and loved ones left behind reflect on disease that has killed 1 million in U.S.

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts:

Older Americans reflect on what the pandemic has taken from them. Read more here.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 87% of U.S. children who were hospitalized with Covid-19 during the Omicron surge were unvaccinated. Read more here.

The long-term consequences of the coronavirus pandemic are starting to become clearer, writes the former editor of DTN/The Progressive Farmer. Read more here.

The U.S. death toll from Covid-19 will soon surpass 1 million if it hasn't already. The Atlantic's Ed Yong writes about how many Americans who have lost someone feel their grief has been "intensified, prolonged, and even denied by the politics of the pandemic." Read more here.

Kaiser Health News takes a snapshot of a rural Pennsylvania county with one of the highest Covid-19 death rates in the nation. Read more here.

Diabetics have been one of the hardest-hit groups by the coronavirus. Experts hope policymakers will notice and increase efforts to address the nation's diabetes crisis. Read more here.

The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first breath test to detect the coronavirus. Read more here.

The recent ruling that vacated the Biden administration's mask mandate for public transportation has dealt another blow to the dozens of small mask factories scattered across the country. Read more here.

Quick hits: Texas town split by murder charges in alleged abortion; why food prices are up and farmer profits aren't

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Montana ranchers live right next to a nuclear missile silo—a thought that has been much on their minds during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Washington Post talks with them about what that's like. Read more here.

Texas passed an anti-abortion law last year that empowered citizens to enforce it via lawsuits against abortion providers or those who help them. But recently a woman in a small town was arrested on murder charges for an alleged abortion (though she was soon released and the charges dropped). The controversy split her community. Read more here.

In a recent video, the Michigan Farm Bureau discussed why food prices have been increasing but not farmer profits. Watch the video here.

It's not just chickens and turkeys that are dying from the bird flu pandemic. Bald eagles in 14 states have died too. Read more here.

Just in time for Earth Day, here's a list of America's most endangered rivers. Read more here.

Decades after a Ukrainian teen spent a year in rural Kentucky as a foreign exchange student, the same small town welcomed her back again, this time as a refugee along with her children. Read more here.

Rural Texans who met Vladimir Putin in 2001 reflect on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Read more here.

The University of Kentucky has received a $1.5 million gift from an African American who grew up on his family's farm in the Bluegrass region, meant to encourage Black and other underrepresented students to pursue farming and other natural resources careers. Read more here.

Georgia has the latest "Freedom to Farm" bill, meant to protect farmers from nuisance lawsuits filed by neighbors. Read more here.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says rural areas face unique difficulties accessing banking services

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency Congress created during the Great Recesssion, launched an initiative last month to focus on financial issues rural Americans disproportionately face. This week, CFPB issued a follow-up report detailing the banking disparities rural Americans often contend with.

"The report highlights that many of these communities lack access to physical bank branches, are more likely to seek credit from nonbanks, and are heavily affected by medical bills. The CFPB will be expanding its efforts to address these and other challenges facing the people and families of rural America," CFPB reports. "Local financial institutions, such as community banks and credit unions, often offer products and services that fit the local economic terrain. However, rural communities are experiencing a fast-paced exodus of in-person banking services, with rural communities 10 times more likely than urban communities to be located in banking deserts. In fact, the Federal Reserve has identified more than 2,100 existing and potential banking deserts across the country with more than 1,500 located in rural areas."

Other key findings of the report:

• Rural Americans are more likely to depend on brick-and-mortar bank branches and smaller banks.
• Rural Americans are less likely to have a credit history (i.e., have held and used a credit card). Lack of a credit card, or the credit history to get one, makes it more difficult to address short-term financial emergencies, seek new opportunities (such as moving or starting a business), or fill short-term income gaps.
• Unpaid medical bills affect rural access to credit, housing, and unemployment. Also, health-care and insurance costs tend to be higher in rural communities than in suburban or urban areas.

As part of its Rural Initiative, CFPB is conducting more research to figure out root causes of rural financial disparities, and plans to conduct roundtables with rural stakeholders across the country, as well as work with federal partners to improve rural financial policy. Rural residents are encouraged to use the CFPB's complaint tool to bring attention to shady, inadequate or inaccessible financial services.

Firearms top cause of death for children, up 29.5% in 2020; drug deaths up 84%; how and why do rural kids carry guns?

Chart from New England Journal of Medicine also shows 84% rise in deaths from drug overdose and poisoning.

Firearms surpassed car accidents as the top cause of death among children and teens, according to an analysis of federal data recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that firearm-related deaths for people aged 1 to 19 increased 29.5 percent from 2019 to 2020, the first year of the pandemic, University of Michigan researchers found. That's more than twice the rate of increase in the general population. In raw numbers, that's about 4,300 minors who died in 2020 from all causes of firearm-related deaths.

The increase, and those in some other causes, appeared to be pandemic-related. "Drug overdose and poisoning increased by 83.6%," making it the No. 3 cause of death in children, the researchers write. "This change is largely explained by the 110.6% increase in unintentional poisonings from 2019 to 2020. The rates for other leading causes of death have remained relatively stable since the previous analysis, which suggests that changes in mortality trends among children and adolescents during the early Covid-19 pandemic were specific to firearm-related injuries and drug poisoning."

The gun-death rise was seen across most demographics and types of firearm death. However, gun deaths increased much more than gun related suicides, among minors as well as in the population overall, the researchers found. The university launched a $10 million Firearm Injury Prevention Research initiative in 2019 to overcome the lack of federal funding for such research.

A recent University of Washington study, meanwhile, looked at youth ages 12 to 26 in rural areas who carry handguns, and found six distinct patterns in the age of initiation, duration, and frequency of when they carry guns. The researchers used self-reported data from youth and young adults in 12 rural communities across seven states. Though most rural youth rarely or never carried, the likelihood of handgun carrying tended to increase steadily with age, with no peak through age 26. Among urban youth, in contrast, youth were most likely to carry at age 21, and likelihood declined after that. Overall, researchers said their findings suggest that rural communities should begin promoting handgun safety early, and that safety programs need to be tailored to rural contexts.

Family behind Columbia Sportswear expands philanthropic efforts to help rural and tribal communities in Oregon

Columbia Sportswear, based in Portland, Oregon, is a $5.5 billion outdoor-clothing juggernaut, and the family that owns it is passionate about philanthropy. The extended family's Roundhouse Foundation, launched in 2002, initially focused on supporting arts projects with grants, but in the past few years has become more involved in creative problem-solving in the state's rural and tribal communities, Ade Adeniji reports for Inside Philanthropy.

When Gert Boyle, the daughter and heir of founder Paul Lamfrom, passed away in 2019, she left a large sum to the foundation that her daughter Kathy Deggendorfer says triggered "an explosion of growth," Adeniji reports. Deggendorfer, husband Frank and daughter Erin Borla now run the foundation; they sat down with Adeniji to talk about "how Gert envisioned the family’s philanthropy, how grantmaking has grown to tackle creative placemaking in underfunded rural communities, and now, on the heels of a huge bequest, where the family plans on taking their philanthropy next." 

Wikipedia locator map, adapted

The family began thinking about ways to support rural economies in the early 2000s. It was only natural, since they live in Sisters, a community of about 2,600 near Bend in central Oregon. And it's more important than ever, since 14% of Americans are rural, but only about 7% of all grants go to rural areas. When Deggendorfer received a portion of her inheritance, she decided to formalize her support by creating the Roundhouse Foundation. At first she was distributing about $12,000 in grants each year and working from her home office, but the foundation continued growing. "Just a few years ago, Roundhouse Foundation was giving away six figures annually and held around $22.5 million in assets (fiscal year 2018)," Adeniji reports. "Two years later, the foundation held nearly $142 million in assets and gave away more than $1 million. And in 2021, the foundation granted around $11 million." These days the foundation has 17 staffers and trustees.

One of them is Deggendorfer's daughter. Borla worked for local non-profits and events after college and joined the foundation's board of trustees in 2014. "I came back from school and knew I wanted to live in this rural space and work in economic development and creative space," Borla told Adeniji. She advocated for using public-school libraries as mental-health spaces for students.

The foundation now "focuses its work on four areas that it believes are fundamental to thriving rural communities — arts and culture, environmental stewardship, social services, and education," Adeniji reports. "Creative placemaking, a popular concept in the philanthrosphere these days, is central to the foundation’s work. Its flagship program, Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture, is an artist residency on a 260-acre working ranch, which also engages in agricultural and ecological projects. Roundhouse purchased and retooled the property in 2017, driven by [Deggendorfer's] vision." Some of those projects include regenerative agriculture and the development and conservation of watersheds.

Until 2019, the foundation focused mainly on communities in the Deschutes River Basin in Central Oregon, but the recent flood of new funds allowed its focus to expand to rural areas across the state. "This led to a deluge of calls. But it also forced Roundhouse to get out on the road and grow relationships in every corner of the state," Adeniji reports. "While 'trust-based philanthropy' is a buzzword these days, [Borla] describes part of that trust as simply showing up, meeting people in their own communities and trying to foster an authentic connection. Sometimes these conversations don’t even result in Roundhouse Foundation giving a grant. But rather, the foundation serves as a catalyst, where a vital connection allows an organization to move forward with a project without direct funds from Roundhouse."