 |
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
FAST LANE - September
2001
According to university financial figures for the fiscal year ended June 30, UK brought in $103.4 million in federal research funding, with U of L bringing in $28.4 million. While the schools are not in the upper echelon in winning federal grant competitions, the state as a whole ranked 16th in 2000 in attracting U.S. Congressional dollars earmarked for higher education projects, bringing in over $20 million, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education. The new office is expected to mesh well with initiatives being pursued by Kentucky Commissioner of the New Economy Bill Brundage. The D.C. office, expected to cost the state around $600,000 to operate after contributions by the two universities, will be directed by Audrey Haynes, former deputy secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health Services. Kentucky also pays around $300,000 annually to the consulting firm of Barbour Griffith Rogers. TRI
CITY
“What you see here today is the fruition of an idea generated by a need and an opportunity,” said PAAC president John Murdock. STATE The U.S. Census Bureau State reports that state government tax revenues grew from $500 billion in 1999 to $540 billion in 2000, an eight percent increase. Severance revenues increased the most (39 percent), followed by revenues from occupation and business licenses (16 percent) and individual income taxes (13 percent). Per capita taxes were highest in Connecticut ($2,987), Delaware ($2,871), Hawaii ($2,752) and Minnesota ($2,711), and lowest in New Hampshire ($1,372), Tennessee ($1,360), Texas ($1,315) and South Dakota ($1,228). Kentucky ranked 23rd in total taxes collected, raking in $7,694,610,000 in 2000. Per capita taxation rankings placed Kentucky 19th-highest in the country, at $1,903.77 per person, just below the national average of $1,922 for every man, woman and child. For the record, no state showed a decrease in total tax revenue. BOWLING
GREEN After running into repeated roadblocks in its efforts to get a $107-million industrial park and its $22-million airport approved by federal officials, the Intermodal Transportation Authority is now pinning its hopes on new criteria established by the Federal Aviation Administration. The new standards give less weight to demonstrated need than previously, and more weight to that hazy phrase that is the specialty of economic developers: “economic impact.” ITA officials are applying for FAA funding to conduct a new analysis under the new criteria. In the meantime, the Senate Appropriations Committee, of which U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is a ranking member, has directed the FAA to give funding for the Transpark priority consideration in its FY 2002 budget, which must be approved by the full U.S. Senate. The ITA is already buying land for the project’s initial phase, and hopes to begin construction by year’s end. In a release from the ITA, one prominent FAA official expressed strong verbal support for the project. “I grew up in the Rust Belt, and I saw the same thing happen,” said FAA National Planning Division manager Bob Yatzeck of Bowling Green’s recent losses in the manufacturing sector. “What you are doing here is a very noble thing.” Meanwhile, a letter to the ITA from 18 scientists has spelled out their concerns about possible groundwater contamination from the project that could harm the underground ecosystem of Mammoth Cave National Park. STATE Among recent findings dug out of the mounds of data released by the U.S. Census Bureau: Utah has the most housing units with at least nine rooms. But there has been plenty of more insightful material too. For instance, around 15.7 million of the nation’s businesses had no paid employees in 1998. Nationwide, the number of nonemployer businesses grew by 1.7 percent or 269,118 businesses between 1997 and 1998. Nevada, Georgia and Delaware showed the greatest increases in such businesses during that period. In Kentucky, 217,806 nonemployers are thriving, including just over 28,000 in Lexington and double that amount in Louisville. Their highest proportions are found in the construction, retail and professional and technical services sectors. STATE
“Currently 43 million Americans have no health care coverage, and more than 60 percent of those are either self-employed or employed by a small business that cannot afford to provide health benefits,” said Fletcher of the amendments to the Ganske-Dingell Patient Protection bill. “Access to quality health care should be available to everyone and this amendment accomplishes that.” The added provisions could open up access to quality coverage for around nine million Americans. However, the figure of 43 million may be subject to revision. Just after the act’s passage, the Census Bureau announced a revised methodology (read “following up”) for estimating the number of people with or without health insurance. Had such follow-up questions been asked in 1999, the figure of 42.6 million without insurance announced in September 2000 would have been 39.3 million. A new estimate for 2000 will be released in September. In the meantime, one company in Shepherdsville is doing its part to make prescription medicines available to those who can’t afford them. For the price of nominal registration and processing fees, American Medical Pharmaceutical makes free medicine from drug companies available to low-income individuals. According to the Associated Press, since opening in January, the firm has enrolled around 1,000 people across the nation in its program, which can help them gain access to more than 1,000 medicines. In 2000, members of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America distributed $934 million worth of drugs to 2.4 million patients through patient-assistance programs. LOUISVILLE Louisville Development Bancorp president and CEO Kim Burse received the Martha Layne Collins Leadership Award at the Women’s Business and Leadership Conference staged by Georgetown College and J. Holloway Productions in Lexington. The honor goes to a woman who has used her outstanding leadership ability to better Kentucky’s image in the world at large. Past winners have included Beverly Raimondo of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence and Sharon Darlin, founder of the National Family Literacy Organization. STATE After settling in time to avoid a pilot strike, DeltaAir has followed suit with its mechanics, raising their salaries by as much as 18.2 percent to make them the highest-paid in the industry. Those developments, combined with Comair’s gradual return to full service have the Northern Kentucky Greater Cincinnati International Airport operating with a full arsenal, even given the steep earnings losses recently posted by Delta, American, United and Northwest Airlines. One feather in Louisville International Airport’s cap is the continuing, seemingly recession-proof success of Southwest Airlines. But there’s a new chink in Louisville’s armor: Midway Airlines has filed for bankruptcy, after losing $15 million in the first six months of the year. The immediate reduction from 230 to 130 overall flights will have the effect of eliminating one of four daily round-trips between Louisville and Raleigh-Durham, Midway’s hub. All airlines were glad to see that cancellation and lateness complaints to the U.S. Transportation Department have dropped by 20 percent from a year ago, with actual cancellations down 23 percent and delays down 13 percent. But with that news has come an overall dropoff of around 15 percent in business class ticket bookings – the major reason cited by Midway for its bankruptcy filing. HAWESVILLE A research partnership between the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research, Western Kentucky Energy (an LG&E subsidiary) and the U.S. Department of Energy has found a way to separate and use the components of coal ash to both generate more energy and make compounds useful in paving and aggregate products. A demonstration unit at Western Kentucky Energy’s Coleman Power Station will be constructed to recover and process around 3.4 million tons of ash already stored in the facility’s ponds. That’s just a tiny portion of the 1.5 billion tons of ash landfilled in the U.S. every year. STATE According to a new study from Washington, D.C. think tank The Brookings Institution, downtown Lexington has avoided the trend of job sprawl that often accompanies suburban residential sprawl, keeping 48.8 percent of all jobs in its seven-county area within three miles of downtown, and 74.5 percent within 10 miles. Twenty-eight-and-a-half percent of all jobs in the Louisville MSA were within three miles of downtown, but the city has managed to keep over 78 percent of jobs within 10 miles of the city’s center. In the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, over a third of workers work more than ten miles from city centers. The South as a region has the most job sprawl. One study finding holds great promise for Louisville: “There is a significant relationship between political fragmentation and the degree of job decentralization. In metropolitan areas with many political units, firms are more likely to locate far from the city center.” A recent release from the U.S. Census Bureau reported that around 2.5 million people commute more than 90 minutes each way to work. LOUISVILLE
One reason for the move is market research. Delta Queen found that most passengers prefer the seven-day interval for a steamboat excursion, which made Louisville a perfect point of embarkment. The new development hold great promise not only for the establishments that might serve cruise passengers – whose numbers will double under the new arrangement – but for dozens of companies that might furnish supplies for the boat’s crew and operations. ERLANGER
Since locating its first North American plant in Georgetown, Toyota has spent $84 billion in this country, and now buys from some 500 North American auto suppliers. “Our local suppliers are an essential part to our success here in North America and we are proud of the relationships that we have built with them,” said Teruyuki Minoura, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America. They’ve built some vehicles with them too. Through June of this calendar year, the company produced over 570,000 vehicles at plants in Kentucky, California, Indiana and Ontario, led far and away by the ever-popular Camry. By 2003, Toyota projects it will employ around 33,000 people on the continent. STATE Kentucky ranks 32nd in the nation in its “friendliness” to entrepreneurs, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Small Business Survival Committee’s sixth annual Small Business Survival Index. Tennessee placed 10th, Illinois 13th, Indiana 16th, and Ohio 40th, with Nevada coming in first and the District of Columbia coming in last. The index tallied 17 government-related costs impacting small business and entrepreneurs, including gas taxes, capital gains taxes, property taxes and number of bureaucrats. The organization noted that of the 11 states, including Tennessee, which do not impose a capital gains tax on individuals, nine experienced employment growth at a faster pace than the total U.S. from 1990 to 2000. LOUISVILLE Adding some special pizazz to its 40th anniversary celebration, Humana Inc. has signed a three-year national health services contract with General Electric. Effective January 1, 2002, the contract will make health services coverage available to approximately 26,600 eligible GE employees and their dependents in Kentucky and 30,600 eligible GE employees and their dependents in Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition, the agreement makes coverage available to 11,000 employees in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a renewal of an existing contract. “We believe a renewed commitment to our customers played a critical role in General Electric’s decision to select Humana as a partner in providing health services to their employees,” said Mike McCallister, president and chief executive officer of Humana Inc. LOUISVILLE Even in the midst of a downturn, two Louisville high-tech firms are doing just fine, thank you. Stonestreet One, a specialist in Bluetooth wireless technology, has announced that it will provide Bluetooth solutions to Hitachi Semiconductor America Inc., including platform, software and system integration support. Meanwhile, Sony-owned Emazing continues to make headway with its email subscription services, now going out to 12 million subscribers every weekday. Its latest partnership is with the Country Music Association. “It’s a natural choice,” said Emazing director of marketing Arnulf Agbunag. “Our subscriber base closely matches the demographics for country music fans – they’re a cross-section of middle America, extremely loyal, and they are avid users of technology.” Business Briefs BOWLING GREEN
FLORENCE
FRANKLIN
LEXINGTON
LOUISVILLE
OWENSBORO
SHEPHERDSVILLE
SOMERSET
WINCHESTER
STATE
|
 |
|
Copyright 1996-2001, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial
content is copyright 2001, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
Following the
example of Kentucky’s horse industry and other
special interest groups, the University of Louisville and
the University of Kentucky have joined forces to open an
office in Washington, D.C. dedicated to pursuing and
obtaining federal research dollars for projects on their
campuses. Not only are the university presidents –
John Shumaker and Lee Todd – collaborating on
lobbying efforts, but their faculties may in turn
collaborate on research in certain areas like information
technology, health sciences and business.
More than 200
people in this southern Graves County hamlet showed up to
celebrate the grand opening of the Purchase Area
Aquaculture Cooperative’s catfish processing plant
in June. The $1-million plant, which will employ 20-25
people, has a capacity of one million pounds of catfish
per year. And adjacent fingerling operation has 800,000
fingerlings in production for sale. According to the
Kentucky Department of Agriculture, the plant has a
grower base area of 125 acres of ponds, with plans for an
additional 180 acres by the end of 2002. The PAAC
currently has 41 members.
Republican
Congressman Ernie Fletcher was front and center in giving
shape to the successful Patients’ Bill of Rights Act
in Washington, pushing for an amendment that included
both association health plans and medical savings
accounts. In addition, the act included a provision to
hold HMOs accountable for decisions. The final vote in
the U.S. House of Representatives was 226-203.
Burse Becomes
First Black Woman to Earn Women’s Leadership Award
Beginning next
year, the Mississippi Queen steamboat, owned by Delta
Queen Steamboat Company, will make Louisville a port of
turnover rather than a port of call, which may mean a
tremendous boost to the downtown economy. The
420-passenger boat will make 16 seven-day cruises next
year between the River City and Pittsburgh, with eight
beginning and ending in Louisville.
During fiscal year
2000, Toyota purchased $14.85 billion worth of parts and
materials in the United States, with $13.04 billion of
that total going straight to U.S. plants and $1.81
billion going to plants in Japan. The overall figure is a
15-percent hike from one year ago. 
Humana Marks 40th
Year with Party, General Electric Contract
Cathy
Chatfield, president of the Lexington chapter of
the National Association of Women Business Owners
(NAWBO) and of her own firm, Qualified Plan
Services, Inc., won the National “Team
Builder” Leadership Award at the NAWBO
convention in June.