The Tribune ran an article yesterday about a Workforce Initiative bill that Governor Mead apparently expects the legislature to pass this next session. In discussing it, they stated:
Despite the state’s major funding shortfalls, Gov. Matt Mead said he expects Wyoming lawmakers to pass a workforce training package worth tens of millions of dollars when they meet this winter.
Mead said that while investing in workforce training, which is a key part of his economic diversity initiative, may be a tough sell, it is essential to helping the state’s economy recover and grow.
“There is a lot of things that look counterintuitive that will get us where we need,” Mead told a meeting of the Wyoming Community Development Agency Board on Monday in Casper.
But we never learned what kind of workforce training he was contemplating.
That's a bit frustrating.
We've been down this road in some ways so many times its as circular as the Indianapolis 500, and just about as long. We figure we need to diversify, and the state government needs to have a role in that, and then the energy industry picks up and we forget all about it. Indeed, of note, one of the training facilities, a private one, that sprung up last go around was one that trained people to work on oil rigs. That may have been a good thing, it'd be better to have people trained rather than not, but its interesting that this is where our training heart turned out to be.
Of course, that's not completely fair. The University, which is suffering from budget woes, and the community colleges, remain fantastic,and truly diverse, training grounds.
While it might not seem directly related, this morning readers of the Tribune were greeted by this headline:
Barrasso presses DOE nominee on committment to coal research
And yes, "commitment" is misspelled in at least the on line original. Not my blunder there, although I make plenty.
In that article we learn that Senator Barrasso is pressing the DOE nominee for Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fossil Energy, Steven Winberg, for that commitment.
Why should Mr. Winberg have to make such a commitment? We're repeatedly told that our state is rigorously for free enterprise. Wouldn't a perfectly rational comment from the nominee have been something like "Mr. Senator, we will rely upon the glory of the competitive market to meet the future energy demands of the United States and the world to provide abundant future energy. . . and if coal wants to be part of that, as it does, we are confident that it will invest the resources necessary to meet that goal. . ."
Well, he's not going to say that and Senator Barasso would have gasped if he had. But there's something to that.
The state has been sinking money into "clean coal" even though at the same time many of the knowledgable people in the area have stated that it can't be done. It clearly can't be done without the investment of enormous amounts of money, and that appears to be more, at least right now, than the industry itself has.
Perhaps this investment by Wyoming, and maybe by the Federal government, is worthwhile. The US has a lot of coal and it's a major employer in Wyoming. The odds are against its success however, and that's quite clear. It's also counter to a growing international trend away from coal, as well as the economic time line of the industry. I'm not saying that trying to develop clean coal is completely pointless, but it is interesting that if we're willing, as a state, to spend money on the effort, and to have the Federal government do it as well. That's a bit hypocritical if we don't feel that effort is likewise worthwhile elsewhere, and perhaps more particularly on things likely to have a more immediate impact.
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