Jack Owens and his "Days of Gold" Tour with Kellie Pickler will headline this year's Friends of Coal Auto Fair, which is set for July 18th-20th at the Paul Cline Memorial Sports Complex in Beckley.  The Fair will again feature the car show, carnival rides, food, vendors, live music, special performance and surprise guests with upwards of 50,000 people from all over the country attending.  Visit the website: www.friendsofcoalautofair.com  for ticket, sponsorship, schedule and general information on this three-day weekend event.

The Wheeling Cabela’s location and the Friends of Coal teamed up over the July 4th weekend for the 2nd Annual “Coal Miners Appreciation Days” at the store. The event featured special discounts for all coal miners as well as a lineup of special events, including a concert by Chris Higbee, a visit from the Friends of Coal IHRA Championship dragster Greg Fowler and a book signing by author Stacie Vaughn Hutton of her best-selling book “Shovel Full of Sunshine.”  The event ran on Friday, July 4th and Saturday, July 5th.  

Throughout the event, the Friends of Coal maintained a tent on site to encourage patrons to join the Friends of Coal and become advocates for the coal industry.  In addition to the concert, several live remotes were conducted by local media outlets. The Cabela’s/Friends of Coal “Hometown Heroes” celebration is designed to support “Boatsy’s Boxes”, an organization that sends gift baskets to our military stationed overseas.

Last week the WV Tax Department of Revenue filed the Tentative Natural Resource Valuation Variables for tax year 2015 for public comment.  The variables are used to appraise coal, oil, gas, managed timberland and other natural resource properties for property tax purposes.  These proposed variables will be open for comments until August 1, 2014, with the final variables to be filed on September 1, 2014. Copies are available upon request from the Association office.

WVCA member Jackson Kelly PLLC announced, effective July 1st, the Evansville, Indiana law firm of Rudolph, Fine, Porter and Johnson, LLP, had elected to merge its 20 person practice with them.   Rudolph, Fine, Porter and Johnson LLP was founded in Evansville in 1987 and serves clients in the Indiana-Kentucky-Illinois region in the areas of litigation, mediation, estate planning and administration, corporate, health care, banking, employment and real estate law. Jackson Kelly had opened an office in Evansville with three attorneys in 2011. The office is located in downtown Evansville, at 221 NW Fifth Street, Evansville, Indiana 47706-1507.

During the past week, the West Virginia Friends of Coal social media group moved past 77,000 total fans, adding 2,300 new fans and chalking up 1.3 million total impressions (eyeballs on a page) in just the past 15 days.

The Friends of Coal (National) page led the way adding 1,300 new fans over the past 15 days and chalking up almost ½ million impressions. Friends of Coal West Virginia followed closely with 1,000 new fans and just short of another ½ million impressions over the period. The Friends of Coal (National) page is now at almost 31,000 fans while the Friends of Coal West Virginia page is 25,000 total fans.

The West Virginia Coal Association will be re-launching it’s EPA Contact Tool to gather public comments on the agency’s proposed existing source standards for coal-fired power plants. We expect the tool to be re-launched early next week and it will provide a place for the public to send comments to the EPA regarding the job-destroying rule.

Look for an announcement on the re-launch in your email next week along with a link to the tool.

The EPA’s proposed standards for existing coal-fired power plants threatens hundreds of thousands of jobs across the county and will drive up electric prices by as much as 50-100 percent in some places.
 
Public groups from across the political spectrum, from labor unions to utilities, from citizens groups to coal companies have decried the rule as harmful to both the nation and to individual people – particularly those on fixed incomes and the poor.