STATE
Report Looks at Brain Drain of Science Graduates

According to the Southern Technology Council, six Southern states (including Kentucky) rank in the bottom 10 of all states in the percentage of the civilian workforce with a recent bachelor’s degree in science and engineering. But what’s more troubling – as professionals in the field have lamented for years – is the large percentage of those few who leave the states where they earned their degrees.

“Who Will Stay and Who Will Leave?” was prepared by the Southern Growth Policies Board based on a sample of 7,741 respondents from the National Science Foundation’s National Survey of Recent College Graduates. It says that college grads are 10 times more likely to remain and work in the state where they earned that degree if they also went to high school there.

Graduates are also more likely to keep jobs in-state if they are foreign students hired after graduation, or if they were older than average for their class. Curiously, graduates are less likely to be employed in-state if they graduate from a research-intensive institution, or if the state is experiencing a highly dynamic or entrepreneurial economy.

The study also looked at high school “leavers” and “stayers,” concluding that the odds that a person would be working in the same state they attended high school in were increased more than 10-fold if that individual remained in state to attend college. “In effect,” say the authors, “stayers stay.”

Among other results:

Every half-point increase in undergraduate GPA reduced the odds of that an individual working in the state where they received their high school degree by 13 percent.

“Receiving a degree from a public land grant school decreased the odds 36 percent that one would be retained compared to attending public other institutions. Of even greater magnitude, receiving a degree from a historically black institution decreased the odds 51 percent compared to other public institutions.”

“The average state can expect to retain 76 percent of its stayers (attend high school and college in same state), 43 percent of its arrivers (attended high school elsewhere but received most recent degree in focal state), and 23 percent of its leavers (attended high school in focal state then left to attend college elsewhere). The odds of retaining arrivers are 2.5 times greater than leavers.”

The report recommended programs like those in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Virginia that not only target individuals with specific skill sets for scholarships, but also engage students with local business and industry during their college careers through co-op and internship. “If the current shortages of scientists and engineers persist or get worse,” it concludes, “a state’s ability to retain its technical human capital, and not cheaper labor and various tax incentives, may decide its place in the New Economy.”

LOUISVILLE
Sky Falls on Tricon's KFC Bucket

Although Tricon Global Restaurants apparently came up with enough dough to fund a new pro basketball arena they wanted to call the KFC Bucket, Vancouver Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley chose to move his team to Memphis, pending NBA approval. Some speculate that Rick Pitino’s hiring by the University of Louisville may have pulled away just enough fan and media attention to make Heisley’s decision easier – though that may not be a palatable explanation to Pitino protegÈ and University of Memphis coach John Calipari.

Pro basketball boosters in Louisville, deflated for now by snubs from teams in both Vancouver and Charlotte, have pledged to be on the lookout for the next opportunity to attract a team. Meanwhile, some elected officials have called the continuing efforts a waste of time, after repeating the failure of last year’s effort to lure the Houston Rockets to town.

NEWPORT
NS Group Announces Restructuring

Citing a return to focusing on energy products, NS Group has ceased production of steel and hot rolled coils at its Newport Steel facility in Wilder, costing the area 300 jobs.

The company will exit the special bar quality (SBQ) business, necessitating the closing of its Koppel Steel plant in Koppel, Pa., in June.

“When fully implemented, the restructuring is expected to produce annual cost savings of $16 million to $18 million,” said company president and CEO RenÈ Robichaud, “of which half would be in cash savings and half in reduced depreciation charges.”

The company will record a first-quarter restructuring charge of $54 million, but its board also authorized the repurchase of up to two million shares of the company’s common stock.

Eighty employees will lose their jobs in Koppel, although many are expected to transfer to another NS plant in Ambridge, Pa.

The company also announced a 12 percent increase in sales from fourth quarter 2000 to first quarter 2001, with total receipts of $82.1 million. "The outlook for our business has never been brighter," said Robichaud.

LEXINGTON
Local Government Makes Tough Calls on Commercial Development

While plans for a golf course development near Hamburg Place on the city’s bustling northeast side are alive and well, proposals to locate two golf courses, housing and a hotel near Blue Grass Airport were recently withdrawn from consideration by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County planning commission, as the principals faced a denial of continuance and vocal neighborhood opposition to further commercial development around the airport.

Meanwhile, the Urban County Council declared a moratorium on “vinyl box” additions to older houses near the University of Kentucky. The council has also sent to committee a “College Area Party Plan” that would permit police to crack down more quickly and effectively on raucous student parties that disrupt residential neighborhoods. That problem has escalated in those areas since UK extended its no-alcohol policy to include off-campus fraternity and sorority houses, driving the parties into other off-campus housing. The council also declared a ban on further development at the Greenbrier subdivision, on the city’s northern outskirts.

At another meeting, Beaumont Centre – another commercial hub on Lexington’s south side – was barred by the planning commission from further retail development, thus keeping the area zoned for office space, which planners cite as more desirable to control traffic patterns on the city’s main arteries.

GEORGETOWN
Toyota Picks Convis to Lead kentucky Plant to Next Level

Just as Toyota has striven to increase its purchases of supplies from companies in the countries where it does business, so too has it shepherded the careers of leaders native to those countries. The latest example is Michigan native Gary Convis, 58, who has been named president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky in Georgetown. The 40-year industry veteran has been with the company since 1984. Convis has highlighted the Toyota’s need for flexibility in both its processes and its team functions and capabilities, as Toyota tries to avoid the downturn now affecting other auto makers.

ASHLAND
Cingular to Join Kentucky's Growing Roster of Call Center Companies

Cingular Wireless, the SBC and BellSouth joint venture, will establish a call center with around 900 employees at the 800-acre EastPark industrial park, which is supported entirely by coal severance taxes. The facility is one of six to open throughout the South in the next few months. Boosted by state tax incentives of around $12 million, the center will have a payroll of around $23 million. The spec building was purchased for $1.5 million.

STATE
Study Confirms Commonwealth's Role in Automotive Economy

A University of Michigan study entitled “Contribution Of The Automotive Industry To The U.S. Economy” finds that Kentucky has the 13th-highest auto industry employment of any state in the Union. That includes 28,100 workers involved directly in auto manufacture, 77,600 supplier and support jobs and 165,500 spin-off jobs. The report also notes that the state is home to 338 new-car dealerships, which generate around $6.8 billion in annual sales. “About 10 percent of Kentucky’s workforce is employed in either the auto industry or a job dependent on the auto industry,” said Josephine S. Cooper, president and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, one of the study’s sponsors.

BOWLING GREEN
WKU College Embarks on $1-Million Teacher and Technology Project

Thanks in part to $450,000 in funding secured by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Western Kentucky University’s College of Education and Behavioral Sciences will embark at the end of May on a $1 million project to enhance the instructional technology skills of new teachers. Project coordinator and university director of educational technology Dr. Leroy Metze pointed out how quickly and dramatically new technologies have influenced the teaching profession. “You can’t just teach the subject,” he observed. “You teach students to learn the subject.”

STATE
2001 General Assembly Passes Business-Friendly Brownfields Bill

Older industrial properties contaminated with residue and materials from former owners and tenants may be more easily resurrected now, thanks to the passage of Senate Bill 2, the “brownfields bill.” The new law will protect potential redevelopers from litigation and enable them to work alongside state environmental protection officials in addressing a parcel’s remediation needs. The law is expected to have its most far-reaching effects with the old industrial areas of Louisville and the many vacant tobacco warehouses around the state. It is expected that the move will save developers millions of dollars.

E. Phillip Scherer III, president of Grubb & Ellis/Commercial Kentucky, says “adaptive reuse” is important to the redevelopment of urban industrial properties where the site’s character and use have changed.

“Those lands are more important today not only as a source of tax revenue for the community, but also to encourage redevelopment and employment opportunities within and around the city,” he said, adding that there are hundreds of properties potentially impacted by the legislation.

LEXINGTON
Housing Prices Down, But Value of Restoration Remains High Priority

Home sales in the Lexington market may have been down four percent in February from last year, but that didn’t keep the average price from rising seven percent. It also didn’t keep two historic house restoration projects in the area from receiving major shots in the arm.

First came $400,000 from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to further the continuing work at the Pope Villa, designed by U.S. Capitol architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe as payback for U.S. Senator John Pope’s backing of a federal canal and road system, which Latrobe was also instrumental in designing. Next came $748,000 from the federal government’s “Save America’s Treasures” program – to be matched by the City of Lexington – to repair and restore the 150-year-old Loudon House, home to the Lexington Art League for the past 17 years.

STATE
Four Incubators Will Cultivate New Players in Kentucky's New Economy

Kentucky Commissioner of the New Economy Bill Brundage announced that the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority has approved $10 million in funding for high-tech efforts, including $4 million for a downtown IT incubator and $1 million for an innovation lab at WKU in Bowling Green, half a million dollars toward a $3.2 million downtown Lexington incubator that’s expected to house 15 high-tech start-ups, and $5 million for a medical high-tech incubator at Louisville Medical Center.

The buildings are just part of the overall $40 million being directed toward the knowledge-based economy by the Kentucky Innovation Act of 2000. Twelve million more dollars will fund university research that’s tied in to helping Kentucky-based businesses.

BEREA
Author Gwyn Hyman Rubio Reaps Benefits of Oprah Book Pick

Icy Sparks, a novel about a little Kentucky girl with Tourette’s Syndrome written by Berea’s Gwyn Hyman Rubio, was selected as a title in Oprah’s Book Club, immediately sending it to No. 1 at Amazon.com, and sparking a new print run of 850,000 copies. Authors dream of nabbing a spot on Oprah’s coveted book list, where long-suffering artists find instant success. In this case, as of mid-April, success means an Amazon.com sales rank of #16 for the trade paperback, 5,013 for the hardback and an audio edition due to be released by May.

STATE
Top 100 Small Towns in America Include 10 Kentucky Municipalities

According to Site Selection’s report on the Top 100 small towns conducive to corporate expansion, Bowling Green, ranked second, led a contingent of 10 small Kentucky communities to make the list. Those 10, together with towns from Ohio and North Carolina, comprised fully half of the Top 100. The other nine towns and their rankings are: Frankfort (15), Elizabethtown (18), Glasgow (29), Franklin and Paducah (40), Bardstown (42), Madisonville (51), Mount Sterling (75) and London (95). “This report shows that what we’re doing is working,” said Gene Strong, Economic Development Cabinet Secretary. “Now our job is to keep the momentum going.”

LEXINGTON
Yorkshire's Sidney Feltenstein Wins National Entrepreneurial Honor

The International Franchise Association named Yorkshire Global Restaurants chairman and CEO Sidney Feltenstein Entrepreneur of the Year. Yorkshire owns and franchises the A&W and Long John Silver’s brands. Feltenstein has turned around the brands by injecting capital, bringing in strong management and focusing on collaboration with franchisees. In accepting the award, Feltenstein offered a glimpse of the company’s future.

“I see Yorkshire Global as a collection of foodservice brands in addition to A&W and Long John Silver’s,” he said. “We will make viable, successful concepts out of those that are experiencing difficulty, but we won’t start anything from scratch.”

LEXINGTON
Engineering Has High Priority at UK, as Long as It's Not the Genetic Kind

When former art professor Eduardo Kac launched his current work in “transgenic” expression (remember the glowing green rabbit?) the University of Kentucky could rightfully claim no further association with him, since he began that work after leaving UK for the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. But now UK has had to deal with its own genetic engineering controversy. Animal sciences professor Panayiotis Zavos has agreed to retire from the university after nearly 20 years because of the institution’s discomfort with his ongoing overseas research into cloning – including the possibility of performing such experimentation on humans in the not-too-distant future. In January, Zavos colleague Severino Antinori announced in Lexington his plans to attempt a human cloning within the next year. Zavos is a principal owner of the Andrology Institute in Lexington, a firm offering reproductive services to couples.

NORTHERN KENTUCKY
High Bandwidth Assumes High Profile on Both Sides of the Ohio

Citing a potential savings of $600-700 million, Procter & Gamble will trim nine percent of its workforce – or 9,600 jobs – with a most of the cuts coming from non-manufacturing departments. The move is an aggressive ramping up of the attrition program embarked on in 1999.

Meanwhile, the seven P&G locations around Cincinnati will be better connected as a result of a project pursued along with Cinergy Investments to install a 60-mile high-speed fiber-optic network that roughly covers the Ohio side of the I-275 loop. Whatever capacity not used by P&G will be sold by Cinergy Investments through a selective marketing campaign when the system is ready to go into service.

Don Ingle, president of Cinergy Investments, said, “The demand for bandwidth is exploding. Businesses like P&G are seeking increasing amounts of capacity to meet their business needs, and we are delighted to bring greater bandwidth potential to P&G and other businesses in the region.”

“Greater Cincinnati already has a top-tier IT infrastructure and is among the highest bandwidth per capita cities in the U.S.,” said Gary Conley, president of TechSolve, who recently led an e-commerce readiness assessment for the area. “Additions like this new network will increase the region’s capacity to meet the emerging need for high bandwidth.”

Tri-ED president Danny Fore calls attention to a recent report that placed Greater Cincinnati ahead of such high-tech meccas as Austin, Texas and San Jose, California in terms of per capita usage of high bandwidth, due in large part to the high-speed digital networks installed by Broadwing, the company created in 1999 from a merger of Cincinnati Bell and IXC Communications. Such capacity has been significant in luring companies like Fidelity Investments and Interactive Marketing Technologies to the Northern Kentucky area.

“This emphasis on advanced technology is not only making the area a hotbed for New Economy-related enterprises,” says Fore, “it helps more traditional companies upgrade their capabilities, which ultimately benefits them competitively.”

LOUISVILLE
Online Community of IT Professionals Becomes High-Tech Hot Potato

Louisville-based TechRepublic, just sold to Gartner last year for $80 million, has been sold again, this time to CNET Networks of Palo Alto, Calif. for $23 million. CNET is headed by Louisvillian Shelby Bonnie, which company spokesmen attribute to sheer coincidence. TechRepublic, an online community of IT professionals, employs 150 of its 235 employees in Louisville, and has experienced a tripling of subscribers in the past year. But like many of the dotcoms its subscribers may have worked for in the past, it hasn’t made a profit. A CNET spokesman said the company has no plans to move TechRepublic at this time.

Business Briefs

BARDSTOWN

• MST Steel Corporation will locate a 40,000-s.f. processing and distribution center here, starting up with 15 employees in July. The company will receive $1.2 million in state tax credits. While the facility will serve several automotive customers with plants in Kentucky and the Southeast, its primary client will be the stamping plant of next-door neighbor Tower Automotive.

BOWLING GREEN

• Having received approval from its board of directors, the Inter-Modal Transportation Authority will hire Presnell Associates to help the organization acquire around 125 parcels of land – totaling 2,000 acres – in order to construct a business park. “We want to buy land at a fair and reasonable price for both the property owners and the taxpayers,” said ITA president Dan Cherry. The board also approved a $6-million bond-financing plan developed by Warren County financial consultant Ross, Sinclaire & Associates.
• Geoghegan Roofing and Supply, Inc. was one of only 121 contractors nationwide to receive the 2000 Inner Circle of Quality Award from Firestone Building Products of Carmel, Ind. The honor takes into account both inspection ratings of roofs installed in past years and total square footage of all the company’s roofing product installations during the year.

CAMPBELLSVILLE

• Campbellsville University has entered into a partnership with Eternal-Life Christ College of Taipei, Taiwan, which will allow Taiwanese students to earn graduate degrees in music or business at the Kentucky school. The Taiwanese college, founded in 1986, boasts an enrollment of 1,200 students. A similar partnership with Baptist schools in Brazil has brought almost 50 new students to the Campbellsville campus this spring. Campbellsville University was recently named a “hidden treasure” in the 2001 Kaplan/Newsweek College Catalog.

COVINGTON

• Kenton County will pay $1.5 million for the former Huntington Bank building downtown in order to relocate county and state offices displaced by jail expansion at the nearby courthouse. The expansion, currently being studied by the consulting firm of Ball and Blodgett of Columbus, will cost over $27 million.
• Ashland Specialty Chemical Company announced the formation of Ashland Taiwan Co., founded to serve the stripping and etch residue removal needs of the region’s growing semiconductor industry.

DANVILLE

• The National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded the city of Danville the Great Main Street Award, for efforts the community has made to retain its downtown’s character and business instead of resorting to typical American sprawl. Along with leaders in Elkader, Iowa; Mansfield, Ohio; Walla Walla, Wash.; and Enid, Okla., Danville leaders received signage and $2,500 along with the honor.
• Ephraim McDowell Health will add to its network the services of Fort Logan Hospital and Extended Care facility in Stanford. The transaction is expected to close by July.

EASTERN KENTUCKY

• Appalachian Regional Healthcare suffered a setback when 2,300 members of the United Steelworkers of America, a majority of the 2,700 workers covered by the contract, voted to reject a contract by the narrow margin of 21 votes.

ERLANGER

• Rubber and plastics processor Parkway Products Inc. has entered into a joint venture with BMI, a maker of shielding for electronics protection, to market the metal molding products of Thixomat Inc., with production scheduled to begin in June.

FLORENCE

• After a struggle with neighbors wanting to preserve the land, Answers in Genesis Ministries has broken ground on the $14 million Creation Museum and Family Discovery Center, whose aim is to present a religious viewpoint of scientific creationism. Museum officials, who have so far raised $4 million toward the project, hope to attract 25,000 people in the museum’s first year of operation after it opens at the end of 2002.

HAWESVILLE

• Swiss firm Glencore International AG will partner with Century Aluminum of California to purchase the NSA aluminum smelter, which puts out 237,000 metric tons of the metal annually.

LA GRANGE

• The Oldham County Water District is in the midst of a $1.8 million project that will double the volume distributed to La Grange and Buckner, two rapidly developing areas. The new lines will not only boost water pressure for residential customers, but also for businesses at the Oldham County Commerce Park. The project will also serve as the foundation for further expansion of the system in Centerfield and Ballardsville, where further development is also taking place. With more than 46,000 residents, Oldham is one of the fastest-growing Kentucky counties, having increased its population by 39 percent between 1990 and 2000.

LEXINGTON

• Wallace’s Bookstore founder and former Kentucky governor Wallace G. Wilkinson owes more than $418 million, and colleges around the country have asked the bankruptcy judge in Lexington to be let out of contracts in case his bookstore company is unable to operate. Wilkinson lists his assets at around $80 million, including 971 acres of Mercer County farmland, Wilkinson Flying Service at Blue Grass Airport, Park Plaza Apartments in downtown Lexington and the Executive Place and Quality Place office buildings in Lexington.
• Keeneland has purchased a 25 percent interest in online bloodstock auction exchange Equine Spectrum. Another 25 percent of the company is being offered to prospective investors. “Our next, and possibly more important, step is to offer Equine Spectrum equity to owners and breeders,” said Reiley McDonald of Eaton Sales, one of Equine Spectrum’s founding members. Both companies have already seen some success in offering limited online auctions, so the partnership was seen as a natural fit. “All along, both groups have agreed that the primary goal of the online auction is to complement the public auction system, not replace it,” said Keeneland president Nick Nicholson.
• A $10,000 prize will be awarded in May to the winner of a design contest for the plaza between the city’s two new courthouses. Thus far, the city has received more than 150 requests for competition entry packets, including queries from 10 foreign countries. The whole process is managed by Louisville-based The Competition Project Inc., a non-profit clearinghouse for information and ideas on design competitions. Actual construction on the plaza should begin in 2002.
• The Lexington affiliate of the national Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars last year, with $156,0000 of it going toward 15 grants to area hospitals and health departments. Nationwide, the foundation recently announced a seven percent rise in research funding, awarding more than $19 million to 113 projects.
• Once again, Caudill’s Climatemaster has earned the designation of Trane National Distinguished Dealer, winning the honor for the fourth time in the last five years. Only 10 percent of Trane’s dealers are selected for the encomium.
• After winning a Silver Anvil award from the Public Relations Society of America last year for its work on the PRIDE environmental program, Preston-Osborne did it again this spring. The firm earned the honor for its “Thrill in the Ville” campaign to promote the vice-presidential debate in Danville, conducted in partnership with debate host Centre College.
• According to American Chamber of Commerce numbers, Blue Grass Airport’s total passenger count was down 4.4 percent in December versus 1999, and freight tonnage was down by 18.8 percent. Those numbers may change quickly as the facility added its second new nonstop destination in the last six months; two daily flights by US Airways Express to Philadelphia, the last of the airline’s three hubs (Charlotte and Pittsburgh are the others) to feature service to and from Lexington. From May 20 through July 31, passengers on the Philadelphia flights can earn double miles on their US Airways Dividend Miles accounts.
• The Kentucky Horse Park generated $132.4 million in spending in 2000, according to the Kentucky Department of Travel. The attraction’s blockbuster Imperial China exhibit brought in $14.4 million of that total, a figure surpassed by the $14.6 million in total taxes that the Horse Park generated, including $12.3 million in state taxes and $2.3 million in local taxes.
• Host Communications has added the University of Michigan to its roster of a dozen universities where it holds the exclusive media marketing rights for its major sports programs, signing a five-year contract.

LOUISVILLE

• The College of Business and Public Administration at the University of Louisville was ranked 13th among the “50 Best Business Schools for Entrepreneurs,” according to Success Magazine. While the college has consistently been in the rankings since 1997, college dean Robert Taylor called the achievement “incredible,” considering that the number of entrepreneurship programs in the nation has almost doubled in that time.
• Although it recently lost the Caesars Indiana account when the casino took its ad work in-house, Creative Alliance is looking to boost its profile by aligning its names. The company’s Chicago unit, The January Group, will now be called Creative Alliance-Chicago, and its Sager-Bell subsidiary in Louisville will now do business under the Creative Alliance name.
• Papa John’s spent $3.1 million to install equipment to meet its mounting national printing needs. According to Business First, about 18 percent of the $21 million in sales generated by Papa John’s Support Services in 2000 was for commercial printing jobs, and the new machinery will increase the company’s capacity to handle outside as well as internal jobs.
• Environmental Industries Inc. of California has purchased Fullbach Services Inc., fortifying its claim to being the country’s largest private landscaping firm, with over $500 million in annual revenue.
• The Gorilla Forest is well on its way to existence at the Louisville Zoo, after campaign chair Annette Schnatter announced that recent contributions – including $150,000 from Fifth Third Bank and $100,000 from The Humana Foundation – have brought total funding for the project to more than $12 million.
• After reporting 1999 losses of $683.2 million, Vencor rebounded to report 2000 losses of only $53.6 million. Revenue was up $200 million to $2.9 billion. The company has been reorganizing since it declared bankruptcy in 1999. Now on the brink of emerging from bankruptcy, the company suffered a slight setback recently when it was ordered by the Department of Justice to pay $26 million in fines for submitting false Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare claims. Its real estate division Ventas will pay $103 million.
• In a $5.2 million deal, Elmore Just, owner of Louisville Golf Co. and Persimmon Ridge Development Co, reclaimed ownership of the Persimmon Ridge Golf Club in Shelby County in February, after selling it to Golf Trust of America in 1998.
• EPI Corp. will double the size of its planned Oaklawn Place nursing home on Shelbyville Road from 35,000 s.f. to 62,000 s.f., according to a cost escalation filing (from $6.3 million to $10.5 million) with the state’s Certificate of Need office. However, the facility would still hold the originally planned number of beds – 56. Plans for an attached assisted living development have been frozen, but the changes have incorporated added space and amenities. EPI owns and operates 21 nursing homes.

MURRAY

• Mattel will close its last U.S. toy assembly plant in order to shift operations to the lucrative labor market of Mexico, leaving 980 people looking for work after the layoffs begin in June. The company still has one distribution center located in Hebron, as well as six others spread across the country.

PARIS

• According to numbers from the state, Bourbon County leads the Bluegrass region in adding manufacturing jobs over the past two years, attracting 452 new positions in that time.
  Somerset
• The U.S. Coast Guard has made it official: All houseboats with rear exhaust vents must be recalled by their manufacturers, based on results of their investigation into carbon monoxide-related deaths at Lake Powell in Arizona. Five of the nine manufacturers in this houseboat hotbed near Lake Cumberland had already initiated voluntary recalls.

STATE

• U.S. House of Representatives Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Policy Chairman Christopher Cox of California named Kentucky Representative Ernie Fletcher as Chair of the Health subcommittee. Fletcher will also serve on the Biotechnology, Telecommunications and Information Technology subcommittee, as well as the Retirement Security, Capital Markets and Tax Policy subcommittee.
• An analysis by the Associated Press of U.S. bridge records kept by the Federal Highway Administration found that 29 percent of the nation’s spans are considered “deficient,” meaning in need of repair, too narrow, or too weak for their daily traffic. Kentucky has the eighth-highest number of deficient bridges, with 4,072 out of 13,374 (or 30 percent) deemed unworthy.
• Financial ratings company A.M. Best gave a rating of A- to Kentucky Employers’ Mutual Insurance, which specializes in workers’ compensation coverage. “KEMI priced its product responsibly,” said company CEO and president Roger Fries, “And we have focused resources on real improvement in the safety environment for Kentucky workers.” KEMI recently instituted e-commerce capabilities, allowing policyholders and agents secure access to account information.
• According to the Jockey Club, the 1998 North American foal crop rose 2.3 percent from 1997 to 35,917, with 9,490 born in Kentucky. The organization predicts a continued increase in foals, looking for 37,300 in 2001.
• The following five journalists were inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame at the University of Kentucky in March: multi-media star and Maysville native Nick Clooney; Mountain Eagle columnist Virginia Harris Combs; New York public television stalwart William R. Grant, a Winchester native; newspaper publisher Guy Hatfield; and Atlanta news anchor Monica Kaufman, a University of Louisville graduate.
• While January’s unemployment number in Kentucky had its usual spike upward from December, from 3.7 percent to 4.8 percent, Department for Employment Services chief analyst Carlos Cracraft said several sectors experienced notable increases in total jobs since January 2000. Eating and drinking establishments and miscellaneous retail establishments combined to add 4,500 jobs over last year. The services sector recorded 11,700 more jobs than in January 2000.
• For a fee of $2,500 (half of which is reimbursed by the Bluegrass State Skills Corporation), any manufacturer in the state can now subscribe to the Kentucky Manufacturers Satellite Network, a worker training and development channel offering more than 500 short courses from U.S. universities through the National Technological University in Fort Collins, Colo. So far, 16 companies in Kentucky have signed up for the network.

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