As the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary heads to a final vote, and the national conversation around vaccines intensifies, it’s worth examining Maine’s childhood vaccination rates.

During the last school year, vaccination rates among kindergartners across Maine were around 97 percent for all four mandatory vaccines. The rates have increased steadily since 2019, when the state passed legislation ending nonmedical exemptions. But some public health advocates worry that vaccine hesitancy could increase under the Trump administration.

Under state law, all kindergarten students in a public or private elementary school must have the following vaccines: Diphtheria/Pertussis/Tetanus (DTaP), Poliomyelitis, Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) and Varicella (VAR).

In 2019, Maine passed a law that eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions in response to dropping rates of vaccination among schoolchildren. At the time, Maine was one of only 17 states that allowed exemptions if a parent or guardian cited a personal reason, according to reporting from the Bangor Daily News.

Since then, annual vaccination data shows that exemption rates have dropped across the board for the four required vaccinations. The exemption rate for the polio vaccine dropped from 5 percent in 2019-20 to 0.6 percent last year.

Before the law went into effect, Maine had one of the highest opt-out rates in the country: it was 5.3 percent in 2017-18 when the national median was 2.2 percent. Last year, Maine’s opt-out rate was 1 percent compared to the national median of 3.7 percent.

A student who isn’t vaccinated can still be enrolled in school under certain conditions: a parent or guardian provides written assurance the student will be vaccinated within 90 days; a licensed physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant provides a written statement noting that immunization may be medically inadvisable; or students have an individualized education program that began before September 2021 that included a philosophical or religious exemption.

Last year, 19 schools had kindergarten exemption rates above 5 percent (it’s worth noting that in some of these schools class sizes are quite small). 

Ashwood Waldorf School, in Rockport, had the highest vaccine exemption rate for kindergartners last year at 33 percent – four out of 12 students.

Jeremy Clough, school director, said all four of the exemptions last year were temporary and at least two of the students are now caught up on their vaccines. These temporary medical exemptions often apply to new students who were previously homeschooled and are behind on their vaccinations.

Clough said most of the conversations he’s had with families about vaccines involve explaining the law. 

“There’s really no pushback that the families can have because it’s like, ‘Here’s the law and … you either need to be caught up or you need to talk to your health care provider,’ ” he said.

He said it’s helpful that there’s no gray area in the law. “We’re not doctors,” he said. “I feel like we have no idea what is appropriate medically for anyone. What we know how to do is educate children. So yes, I think it is helpful to have something that’s very clear.”

Jay Corbin, teaching principal of Penobscot Community School, agreed that the law makes conversations more straightforward. He said there wasn’t much resistance from families when the nonmedical exemptions were eliminated and he doesn’t anticipate more pushback going forward.

Penobscot Community School had among the highest exemption rates last year at 14 percent, but that was due to one exemption out of seven kindergartners. Corbin said the school has historically had high vaccination rates. 

The county with the highest exemption rate for kindergartners last year was Piscataquis County at 3.7 percent.

Sue Mackey Andrews, who was a national consultant to health and education departments for 25 years and now is active in public health efforts in Dover-Foxcroft that include childhood vaccine initiatives, said she was surprised the exemption rate wasn’t even higher in her county because Piscataquis has historically had low vaccination rates.

One factor Mackey Andrews pointed to is the lack of access to health care. The closest pediatrician may be in Bangor, which could make it hard to keep kids up-to-date with their vaccines. She said she has also seen the anti-vaccine movement grow in her area due to a “phenomenal” amount of misinformation and fears it could increase under the Trump administration.

In the years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mackey Andrews said there’s been a “dramatic increase” in homeschooled families in the region.

“I suspect that some of it, at least, is vaccine related,” she said.

Mackey Andrews said she would urge people who have concerns about vaccines to listen to their doctors and ask questions. 

“That’s a lifelong, perhaps critical, decision that you’re making,” she said.

ITHACA, N.Y. — For the first time, union contract negotiations between the Ithaca Teachers Association and the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) will be open to the public to watch live online.

Ithaca Teachers Association president Kathryn Cernera said the union had suggested the unusual approach in the name of fiscal transparency.

ICSD Superintendent Luvelle Brown announced the change at the school board’s Jan. 28 meeting. He said he was “looking forward” to the contract negotiation process. The first session is taking place Feb. 13. 

“It is unique, and it is new and different,” Brown said. “But it demonstrates a commitment from the teachers, the leadership of their association, our leadership team, and a community that expects transparency and wants [a] very open dialog around these complex issues facing us all.”

The move comes after last spring’s high-profile battle over ICSD’s annual budget vote, during which voters consistently called on the school district to be more transparent about its spending.

Contractually obligated salary increases are a significant factor driving yearly school district spending. Of the five unions representing ICSD staff, the Ithaca Teachers Association is the largest by membership.

The union’s contract is set to expire on June 30.

The first bargaining session is set for Feb. 13 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The video will be posted to the school district’s website and YouTube channel.

The post Teachers’ union negotiations to be livestreamed in historic first appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.

President Donald Trump’s immigration plan aims to deport thousands of people that are living in the United States without proper documentation.

We wanted to get an idea of how Trump’s plan will impact Kentucky, a place that’s home to nearly 200,000 immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan immigration policy think tank based in Washington, D.C.

So, we called more than 40 local law enforcement operations — the sheriff’s and police agencies that could be tapped to assist federal immigration agents. And we went inside the state’s only full-time immigration detention center — the Boone County jail, where federal agents can hold up to 175 people to await deportation.

KyCIR reporters Morgan Watkins and Jared Bennett discussed what they found with LPM’s Bill Burton. You can listen to the conversation by clicking the audio player above, or you can read more below.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Bill Burton: Jared, has the jail been holding more people since President Trump took office?

Jared Bennett: The Boone County jailer, Jason Maydak, told me he hasn’t seen any evidence of raids or increased enforcement here in Kentucky.

And actually he wasn’t really expecting any in this new Trump administration.

So far they have seen a slight bump, though. There were 131 people held for ICE there when I visited. That was January 28. And by February 3rd, that number rose to 175 people, which is the jail’s capacity for ICE detainees.

BB: How long are people held there?

JB: The jailer told me the average stay for ICE detainees at the Boone County jail was around 45 days, that’s a month and a half, but some people are there for much, much longer, and that’s one of the main issues with ICE holds right now.

People are held for ICE either waiting deportation or for their cases to move through immigration courts, and that can take a really long time. There was a backlog in immigration courts of 3.6 million cases at the end of the 2024 fiscal year.

A federal judge this past August found someone’s year-long stay at the Boone County jail without a bond hearing was unconstitutional. There’s no hard and fast rule about when detainment becomes problematic, but lawyers told me that courts start to get skeptical around six months.

And when I looked at the records I found 20 people had been at the Boone County jail for over six months, and three people for over a year.

BB: You got to tour the jail, what’s it like?

JB: For the most part, a jail is a jail. It’s a big facility, it’s clean, a lot of fluorescent lighting, and it was pretty quiet when I visited. It was below capacity. The jail performs pretty well on ICE inspections, they have a lot of different standards they have to meet to hold people for ICE. That inspection found only three deficiencies that the jailer told me were addressed right away.

But the ICE detainees themselves, they tell a different story. I wasn’t able to talk to any directly, but two filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights in 2021 and said the jail wasn’t taking COVID-19 seriously, didn’t provide translators or regular access to outdoors and recreation. One man from East Africa said he was called racial slurs at the jail.

The Office of Civil Rights investigated and in 2024 made 34 recommendations to address civil rights violations they found. We only have a summary of the findings, so we don’t know what all of the findings were, but we do know ICE only agreed with 18 of the recommendations.

BB: Morgan, Trump wants local police to help ICE enforce federal immigration laws. What do Kentucky officers say, though?

Morgan Watkins: I contacted over 40 police departments and sheriff’s offices and a majority of them got back to me. None of them reported having a formal agreement to partner with ICE, but none said they’d refuse to work with the agency, either.

Several officers said they’d have to consider their available resources – which are limited, especially for small police departments – if ICE asks them for help with an immigration operation.

BB: Do the law enforcement agencies have official policies on working with ICE?

MW: Most of the ones I talked to do not have a policy on ICE, specifically. Louisville Metro Police is an exception. LMPD has policies that limit how and when it can help ICE. A couple of Republican state lawmakers are proposing bills that could force Louisville to drop the restrictions, though.

BELLEFONTE — Rural health services would get an injection of taxpayer dollars to keep their doors open and recruit more professionals to work in remote communities under Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget.

The $51.4 billion pitch unveiled to lawmakers earlier this month also includes a $25 million expansion of an agriculture grant program and increased spending on outdoor recreation that local officials say is key to boosting local revenue.

The Democrat’s proposal — which Republicans say uses inflated revenue projections — marks the beginning of months of hearings and budget negotiations. Pennsylvania lawmakers have until June 30 to send a finalized spending plan to the governor’s desk for approval.

What you need to know:

• Alaska state court officials are seeking $22.2 million in state funding to add three new courtrooms, offices and judges’ chambers to the Palmer Courthouse. The project would also add an enclosed second-floor shell on top of a portion of the new expansion for finishing later. 
• The expansion is needed because of the current large caseload at the courthouse and the region’s growing population. 
• Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s FY 2026 budget does not include funding for the expansion. Securing money for the project is a budget priority for state Sen. Shelley Hughes, who represents Palmer.

---

PALMER – A major expansion planned for the Alaska State Courthouse in Palmer would add courtrooms and chambers for more judges, an update court officials say is desperately needed to accommodate the region’s growing population and caseload.

The project would be the courthouse’s first expansion since 2008, when a $5.3 million project added about 15,000 square feet.

If approved as part of the state’s fiscal year 2026 budget, the new $22.2 million expansion would add about 17,000 square feet, including three courtrooms, bringing the total to 11, and space for three additional judges and their support staff, according to Alaska Court System officials. It would take up to four years to complete, according to project documents.

The expansion would also include a 9,900-square-foot second-story shell built over the new addition. That floor would be ready for interior finishes as part of a future, as-yet unplanned project and could accommodate up to nine additional courtrooms, according to a project master plan published in early 2023. 

“We all know that the Mat-Su area is the fastest-growing population in the state. The Palmer courthouse already doesn’t have enough room for the judges who are there,”  Alaska Chief Justice Susan Carney told lawmakers during a State of the Judiciary address Wednesday. “Palmer Superior Court judges have the highest per judge caseload of any judges in the state. We need more judges to serve the Mat-Su, but we need a place to put them.”

Last year about 2,700 new filings were split among four Superior Court judges assigned to Palmer, or about 660 cases per judge, according to state court system data. The average caseload per judge statewide is 459, court officials said.

The facility’s eight current courtrooms also host proceedings before a District Court judge and three magistrates, said Rebecca Koford, a spokesperson for the Alaska court system. More than 9,000 district court cases were filed at the facility in 2024, including about 1,880 misdemeanors, according to court data.

That caseload is anticipated to grow as the region’s population increases, Koford said. About 15,000 new residents are expected to move to the region over the next decade, bringing the population to about 131,000, according to state estimates.

The expansion project is the court system’s top need, Carney told lawmakers Wednesday.

“I do want to stress that the Palmer Courthouse is our number one capital priority this year, and I hope that you will very seriously consider this request,” she said.

Although the facility hasn’t seen a major expansion in more than a decade, it has received several renovations, including one to clean up flooding caused by a major windstorm in early 2022. The building was first constructed in 1987.

Under the expansion master plan, the three new courtrooms would be built on the south side of the existing building, near Courtroom 8. Two of the rooms would be separated by a folding partition that could be removed for larger trials, while the third could be designed to accommodate traditional, hybrid or remote trials, according to project documents.

Last year, the court system was given $7.5 million for some of the first steps of the planned project, including some utility work and the creation of a final project design. The state awarded a $2.6 million contract late last year for the design to architecture and engineering firm Stantec. 

If lawmakers grant the $22.2 million for the upcoming fiscal year, court system officials plan to next year request a final round of construction funding for a $6.3 million project to expand the Palmer Courthouse entrance, security area and clerk’s office, including additional file storage, Koford said.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal did not include funding for the expansion.

Securing money for the project is a budget priority for state Sen. Shelley Hughes, who represents Palmer. Hughes said she discussed the project’s importance with state Rep. Delana Johnson, who represents Palmer and oversees capital project funding as co-chair of the House Finance Committee.

Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.

— Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com

From coal to education to deregulation to drugs, Gov. Patrick Morrisey covered a lot of ground as he laid out his legislative agenda to a packed House chamber during his State of the State address on Wednesday night. 

Here are five things you need to know about what Morrisey hopes to see this year: 

1. Use West Virginia’s coal to fuel a “Mountain State comeback”

Selling a vision where children will grow up to live and work in West Virginia, Morrisey described a future economy powered by supercomputers, data centers and cryptocurrency. 

And like the heyday of steel in the 50s, Morrisey said this new economy will rely on electricity, and that electricity will come from West Virginia coal and natural gas.

In many ways, a large component of all his plans — whether it was education, cutting business regulations, speeding up permit processing and cutting taxes — is to continue the tradition of the same extractive industries that have left streams polluted, men dying in their 50s and towns with soot in their attics. 

“West Virginia has power, and by God, we are going to use it,” Morrisey said, “We’ll use every last ounce to fuel our Mountain State Comeback.” 

He vowed not only to continue with coal, but with natural gas, hydropower and nuclear energy – an idea that has, at times, been derided by pro-coal lawmakers. 

To get there, he wants to cut taxes, regulations and make it easy for industries to set up shop. 

2. Work closely with President Donald Trump 

When Morrisey first mentioned President Donald J. Trump, the 123 Republican lawmakers in the room erupted in applause, rising from their seats in a standing ovation. 

He positioned West Virginia energy as a major power supplier for Trump’s charge to take on China. Echoing a line from the president’s inauguration last month, he said: 

“I know our state and our nation are on our way to a resurgence and a golden era unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

Throughout the night, Morrisey vowed to work closely with the Trump administration on a range of issues from energy to education to drug abuse. 

West Virginia depends on federal dollars for nearly 50% of the state’s overall budget. Morrisey didn’t mention how potential moves to close the US Department of Education or cuts in federal programs could affect basic services people rely on, like school lunches or seeing a doctor. 

At a hearing held earlier on Wednesday on federal block grants, government employees gave five minute speeches about the programs they administer with federal funds. 

Anti-smoking and vaping campaigns, assistance for heating and utilities, help for sickly children and subsidies for childcare and many other programs are all funded by federal dollars. 

But like Morrisey, not one Republican in the room stopped to ask how any freezes to grant funding could affect those services. Only one Democratic delegate piped up to ask the question. 

3. Cut taxes while closing a $400 million state budget gap

Like Gov. Jim Justice before him, Morrisey said he’s inherited an economic mess. 

He said the state’s got a $400 million budget hole coming up that could get bigger over time. His answer is to cut. 

He touted audits and reviews of spending decisions across state government. He said the state would not fund new programs without new revenue. And he said he would propose consolidating departments in state government and eliminating numerous boards and commissions. 

“We are going to uncover all of the waste and abuse that hides in the dark corners of state government, and we will root it out,” Morrisey said. “If you like what President Trump is doing in DC, you’re going to love what we’re doing right here in West Virginia.”

Now where those cuts will be made will be seen in the budget. Morrisey didn’t mention it, except to say he wanted a “permanent fix” for the state government health insurance. 

While lawmakers have talked about a permanent fix for almost a decade, what they’ve done from time to time is just throw money from the surplus at the insurance program when it came up short. 

Even with all those money problems, he still called for more tax cuts. 

“I’m renewing my call to ensure we have the lowest income tax of all the states that we touch.”

4. Target trans rights and the “woke virus”

And while Morrisey wants to loosen up mandatory vaccination laws for actual viruses, he vowed to continue to eradicate West Virginia of the “woke virus.” 

“We stand for God, for life, for the second amendment, for religious liberty, our Constitution and our freedoms,” Morrisey said. “And we will always fight for those values.”

Morrisey took a victory lap on the closure of DEI offices on the biggest universities in the state, following his executive order banning it from state government. 

“That’s a win for West Virginia, and we’re not done yet,” he said.

He bragged about attending a signing for Trump’s ban on transgender children in sports. Morrisey asked the Legislature to pass a bill that would ban transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms for the gender they identify with. 

5. Get rid of cell phones in schools and government permission slips for hospitals 

But in a speech replete with platitudes, catch phrases, personal stories and broad visions of policy, Morrisey did not give a laundry list of bills for lawmakers to pass. 

He asked for a ban on cellphones in classrooms – garnering one of the few bipartisan applauses of the night. He said he’ll be introducing legislation to start a “one-stop shop” to streamline permitting for industry. 

But the biggest legislative request was to repeal “certificate of need.” The governor characterized it as a “government permission slip” to allow new hospitals and healthcare facilities to open. 

The niche piece of policy is divisive in policy circles – some say it kills competition that could lower healthcare costs. Others say it ensures healthcare systems can keep profitable services and use those to subsidize needed care that operates at a loss. 

He said will be introducing a bill to eliminate it, calling it “a big step forward to improve care for our most vulnerable citizens.”

A tech future powered by coal: Five takeaways from Gov. Morrisey’s State of the State address appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Opioid abuse and rural homelessness create a spiral for some rural residents, a new study has found.

For the study, researchers with the Rural Opioid Initiative at Georgia State University interviewed more than 3,000 people in rural communities across 10 states who had used drugs. Of those, more than half (54%) said they had experienced homelessness in the last six months. 

April Ballard, assistant professor at the Georgia State University School of Public Health, said the research suggests that the number of rural homeless is significantly larger than federal data suggests.

“Houselessness is an issue in rural areas, but it’s not talked about,” Ballard said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “That’s largely because it looks very different than in urban areas. It can look like couch surfing, or moving from place to place. It’s hard to count in the same way that we do in urban areas.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires a nationwide “Point in Time Count” of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January. On that day, groups of volunteers spread out to count and talk to homeless people in a community. However, Ballard said, because of the nature of rural homelessness, getting an accurate count is difficult.

“In an urban area, there are groups of people that get together and they walk around the city and they talk to people (to get the homeless count),” she said. “That can be challenging, obviously, for urban areas that are really spread out or not walkable. But in rural areas, obviously, you’re not going to go climb mountains and go in the backwoods to count people. That’s just not feasible.”

Rural people without housing may live in different situations — with relatives, or in tents, or in cars, Ballard said — instead of living in shelters or on the street. That makes finding and identifying them difficult at best. And there is a greater prevalence of homelessness because of the nature of rural community economics, she said.

“In some rural areas there are fewer economic opportunities and more economic disparities,” she said. “There’s insufficient public housing infrastructure and a limited acknowledgement of rural houselessness, which means that less money and resources go toward it.”

In one case, the researchers counted up to five times as many people experiencing homelessness in Kentucky than the “point in time” counts had identified. In three counties, the research found, the “point in time” counts estimated there were no people who were homeless, while Ballard and her group found more than 100 people in those same counties who said they had used drugs and experienced homelessness in the previous  six months.

Mary Frances Kenion, vice president of training and technical assistance with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, agrees that homelessness in rural communities is undercounted.

“Every year, communities conduct an annual ‘point in time count, which is comparable to what we see in the Census —where folks go out knocking door to door to count people,” she said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “But how do you count people that don’t have a door to answer?”

Rural homelessness, she said, stems not only from lower economic opportunities and a lack of affordable housing, but a lack of support services as well.

“We see a lack of service providers that are really responsible for a whole range of services to the community,” she said. “We do not seem to see the same concentration of service providers that you would see in, say, metropolitan Atlanta or Washington, D.C., or New York City.”

Ballard said her team’s research also indicated that there is a link between opioid use and rural homelessness, each one feeding off of the other.

“Obviously, it’s very clear that the opioid epidemic, as well as other sorts of drugs, has just been wreaking havoc on rural America for a while now. And I would say that houselessness has been an issue in rural areas, but it’s not talked about,” she said. “These two things, I think have been happening in parallel, and as the opioid epidemic has dramatically increased, it [has led] to that kind of cycle.”

The social losses that accompany opioid use disorder, Ballard said — such as unemployment, financial ruin, and the loss of family and social networks — can lead to housing instability and homelessness. In turn, the harsh living conditions presented by homelessness can perpetuate drug use as a coping mechanism. Together the two can create a self-reinforcing cycle that contributes to poorer health and shorter lifespans.

Homelessness can also inhibit treatment and medical care, Ballard said. People  without stable housing were 1.3 times more likely to report being hospitalized for serious bacterial infection and 1.5 times more likely to overdose, the study found. Ballard said the lack of access to clean water contributed to a higher infection rate, while the prevalence of homeless people to use drugs alone increased the risk of accidental overdoses.

Although the two often overlap, Kenion cautioned against equating homelessness with drug addiction.

“I would be really careful about drawing parallels to the narrative that sometimes takes over that the majority of people experiencing homelessness are addicted to opioids or other substances, because that’s not supported by the data,” she said.

Rather, many homeless people across the country have experienced financial hardships — even one unexpected expense —that spiraled out of control and forced them from their homes, she said.

“Not a lot of people realize how folks are just often one crisis away from experiencing housing instability and homelessness, but that is felt more acutely in rural communities,” she said. “If you look at the overall snapshot, rural homelessness has actually increased by 17% between the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and 2023. And 42% of people experiencing homelessness in rural areas are in unsheltered situations, with women and families with children being far more likely to be unsheltered outdoors.”

Both Ballard and Kenion agree that accurately counting the homeless in rural communities in necessary in order to ensure they have the services they need to get back on their feet.

Additionally, Ballard said, having an accurate count can help ensure the rural homeless who have drug abuse issues can get the help that they need.

“I feel like without that awareness, we are not allocating resources to this,” Ballard said. “From a policy standpoint, it’s incredibly important for us to be capturing accurate information and accurate estimates, so that we’re actually dedicating the right amount of resources to communities. If we are trying to stop deaths related to drug use as well as other epidemics related to HIV and hepatitis C, and we’re not considering housing status, efforts to mitigate that are not going to be as effective or as efficient.”

The post Study: Rural Homelessness Is Underestimated and Exacerbated by Opioid Epidemic appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Blaine and Diane Smith were hurt but unsurprised when a Georgia superior court judge ruled last week that a railroad company could seize their land, despite their refusal to sell. 

For nearly two years, they have been fighting to stop Sandersville Railroad Co., a 130-year-old, white-owned business, from building a 4.5-mile rail spur through a historically Black neighborhood in rural Sparta. The company initiated eminent domain, which is a process that allows the government to seize private property for public use.

The proposed spur would cut through parts of the property Blaine and his siblings inherited, which includes 600 acres acquired by his grandfather in the 1920s. Growing up, he farmed, fished, and hunted on the land. His family cultivated cotton, fruits, vegetables, and timber, and raised pigs, chickens, and cows. Not only has it been used to feed generations, but to pay for some family members’ education as well. 

Currently, his brother Mark Smith and his wife, Janet Paige Smith, live on the land. With a railroad just feet away from their home, it would disrupt their peace and run through the middle of the land where Blaine plants trees. He’s also worried about the potential damage to the property from hazardous products being transported on the tracks and people trespassing.

“We’ve had to fight to keep this land. It’s always somebody coming in trying to bamboozle you out of it,” Blaine told Capital B. “There’s people trying to come hunt on it and trespass on it. It’s gonna be easier for them to do that if we put a railroad through the middle of it. … You asked me, “What things bother me about it?” I mean, everything bothers me about it.” 

Despite those concerns, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig L. Schwall Sr., in a ruling on Feb. 4, upheld a previous decision by the Georgia Public Service Commission that the rail spur is necessary for Sandersville Railroad to connect industries, and that it serves a public purpose because it opens a channel of trade through east middle Georgia.

However, the landowners say they won’t be discouraged from the ruling. The Institute for Justice, which represents them, is appealing the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court.

“We’re going to fight ‘til we can’t fight anymore,” Diane said. “I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. My grandmother used to say, ‘no stone unturned’, so you keep unturning and unturning.”

---

Read More: Why This Rural Community Is at War With a 130-Year Railroad Company

---

In 2023, Benjamin Tarbutton II, president of Sandersville Railroad, made plans to construct the rail spur that would connect the Hanson Quarry, a rock mine owned by Heidelberg Materials, to a main train line along the nearby highway. But, the company needed portions of property from 18 owners along Shoals Road to make it happen. 

He touted the project would create 20 temporary construction jobs, a dozen permanent jobs averaging $90,000 a year in salary and benefits, and bring in over $1.5 million annually to Hancock County, where the median household income is nearly $34,000, Tarbutton said in an email. And if the proposal moves forward, local officials hope this could attract future businesses and improve economic growth. 

However, Black landowners have consistently expressed concerns that the railroad could damage their homes, cause noise pollution, and result in the loss of land that has been passed down through generations. Tarbutton moved forward and petitioned the state’s public service commission to condemn the land from the property owners using eminent domain.

Last fall, the public service commission unanimously approved the proposed rail spur during an 11-minute meeting, falling in line with a hearing officer decision in April. The Institute for Justice appealed the decision, arguing the rail line does not constitute a “legitimate public use.” 

---

​​Read More: Rural Georgia Community Keeps Fighting Despite Railroad’s Win to Take Their Land

---

Schwall, the superior court judge, concurred with the commission’s order last week, but halted construction while appeals proceeded. 

Bill Maurer, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, said he’s committed to proving the railroad’s desire to build a new line “entirely for the benefit of a handful of private companies is not a public use under the U.S. and Georgia constitutions and Georgia’s eminent domain laws.”

“We look forward to the Georgia Supreme Court’s review, and we are thankful that our clients will not have to deal with Sandersville building tracks on our clients’ property until the higher court weighs in,” he said. 

Diane Smith said she’s hopeful the law will prevail.

“Is it against the law to protect what you have?” she questioned. “We want to build generational wealth for our children, but not off the backs of someone else.”

For Blaine, the court’s decision “galvanized us to fight harder,” despite people demonizing them for protecting their property.

“Every time you hear an eminent domain case … it’s them against us, and we’re the bad guys, because we try to hold on to what we have. … Leave us alone,” he said. “Let’s make this clear: They are looking to get our land to make money for them. If we win and they don’t … there’s no compensation for us. There’s nothing in it for us, other than our peace of mind, and that’s what we want.”

The post This Black Family Won’t Back Down After Court Allows Railroad to Take Their Land appeared first on Capital B News.

Rural Americans – particularly men – are expected to live significantly shorter, less healthy lives than their urban counterparts, according to our research, recently published in the Journal of Rural Health.

We found that a 60-year-old man living in a rural area is expected on average to live two fewer years than an urban man. For women, the rural-urban gap is six months.

A key reason is worse rates among rural people for smoking, obesity and chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease. These conditions are condemning millions to disability and shortened lives.

What’s more, these same people live in areas where medical care is evaporating. Living in rural areas, with their relatively sparse populations, often means a shortage of doctors, longer travel distances for medical care and inadequate investments in public health, driven partly by declines in economic opportunities.

Our team arrived at these findings by using a simulation called the Future Elderly Model. With that, we were able to simulate the future life course of Americans currently age 60 living in either an urban or rural area.

The model is based on relationships observed in 20 years of data from the Health and Retirement Study, an ongoing survey that follows people from age 51 through the rest of their lives. Specifically, the model showed how long these Americans might live, the expected quality of their future years, and how certain changes in lifestyle would affect the results.

We describe the conditions that drive our results as “diseases of despair,” building off the landmark work of pioneering researchers who coined the now widely used term “deaths of despair.” They documented rising mortality among Americans without a college degree and related these deaths to declines in social and economic prospects.

The main causes of deaths of despair – drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide – have also been called “diseases of despair.” But the conditions we study, such as heart disease, could similarly be influenced by social and economic prospects. And they can profoundly reduce quality of life.

We also found that if rural education levels were as high as in urban areas, this would eliminate almost half of the rural-urban life-expectancy gap. Our data shows 65% of urban 60-year-olds were educated beyond high school, compared with 53% of rural residents the same age.

One possible reason for the difference is that getting a bachelor’s degree may make a person more able or willing to follow scientific recommendations – and more likely to work out for 150 minutes a week or eat their veggies as their doctor advises them to.

Why it matters

The gap between urban and rural health outcomes has widened over recent decades. Yet the problem goes beyond disparities between urban and rural health: It also splits down some of the party lines and social divides that separate U.S. citizens, such as education and lifestyle.

Scholarship on the decline of rural America suggests that people living outside larger cities are resentful of the economic forces that may have eroded their economic power. The interplay between these forces and the health conditions we study are less appreciated.

Economic circumstances can contribute to health outcomes. For example, increased stress and sedentary lifestyle due to joblessness can contribute to chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease. Declines in economic prospects due to automation and trade liberalization are linked to increases in mortality.

But health can also have a strong influence on economic outcomes. Hospitalizations cause high medical costs, loss of work and earnings, and increases in bankruptcy. The onset of chronic disease and disability can lead to long-lasting declines in income. Even health events experienced early in childhood can have economic consequences decades later.

In tandem, these health and economic trends might reinforce each other and help fuel inequality between rural and urban areas that produces a profoundly different quality of life.

What still isn’t known

It should be noted that our results, like many studies, are describing outcomes on average; the rural population is not a monolith. In fact, some of the most physically active and healthy people we know live in rural areas.

Just how much your location affects your health is an ongoing area of research. But as researchers begin to understand more, we can come up with strategies to promote health among all Americans, regardless of where they live.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett was the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress while conducting some of this research.

Currid-Halkett is on the Scholars’ Council for the nonprofit Braver Angels.

Bryan Tysinger receives funding from NIA.

Jack Chapel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.