Anti-Coal Policies A Call to Action in Wyoming

Last week I discussed the potential consequences of the latest CREG report's long-term spending outlook. I pointed to the risk for a structural budget deficit, in other words a deficit that does not go away with an improving business cycle. Part of the reason is the role that minerals-based taxes – primarily severance taxes – play in the Wyoming state budget.

The relative decline in importance of the minerals industry has many reasons, but one of them is undoubtedly increased political resistance to the use of coal for energy. While that may change in the future, it is unlikely that there will be any substantial turnaround this side of the 2016 presidential election.

Presumably, this means that coal mining is a profession in long-term retreat. This presents a challenge to states where coal production has historically been an important industry, a challenge that reaches all the way down to the individuals whose livelihood is jeopardized by federal anti-coal policies.

As a sign that the effects of these anti-coal policies are beginning to make themselves known in Wyoming, the Casper Star Tribune reports on how laid-off coal miners in West Virginia are reinventing themselves:

Brett Dillon, a former coal miner, is director of the United Mine Workers of America's West Virginia Career Center in Beckley, West Virginia. The center provides former coal workers with training in fields such as trucking and natural gas, an industry that has expanded rapidly as the federal government sought to curb carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. The center has registered 500 former coal workers since 2012. Of that figure, Dillon said "a good percentage have gone back to work." He did not provide more specific figures. As is largely the case with similar programs in Virginia and Kentucky, funding comes through National Emergency Grants doled out through the Workforce Investment Act. West Virginia received more than $5 million for displaced mine workers in April, adding to $1.8 million it received in August 2012.

It is worth noting that the federal government is actively sponsoring workforce training programs for "displaced" miners. People who have been working in a profitable industry have now become a cost – albeit probably only temporary – to federal taxpayers. This cost is apparently "worth the while" for Congress.

But more importantly, the retraining programs under the Workforce Investment Act are a clear signal that this administration wants coal to be part of America's energy history, not its future. In June the U.S. Department of Labor announced a $7.5-million National Emergency Grant to help unemployed coal miners in Kentucky find new jobs.

Wyoming mining is about more than coal. However, the more signs there are that coal is on its way out, the more important it becomes that the Wyoming state government takes decisive action to counter the negative effects of federal anti-coal policies. In the next two blogs I will sketch some of the measures that could be part of such a policy strategy.