Licking Valley Courier Editorial: Town’s rebuilding plan catches eye of Clinton Global Initiative

The Licking Valley Courier, a small town Eastern Kentucky weekly newspaper that doesn’t have an online version, had some clever words to share about the Rebuilding West Liberty initiative discussed on these virtual pages. Thanks to Miranda Cantrell, News Editor, we post the column of Publisher Earl Kinner in its entirety below:

Town’s rebuilding plan catches eye of Clinton Global Initiative

Some pleasant ironies in story about Judge Conley’s invitation to participate in international forum

Judge Conley holding a copy of the Courier

Not many readers, we suspect, will fail to detect a bit of pleasant irony underlying the news this week about Morgan County Judge Executive Tim Conley’s invitation to participate in an international forum established by former Democrat President Bill Clinton.

After a tornado last year devastated West Liberty, the town of 3,500 began an initiative called Rebuilding West Liberty, which was designed to not only help re-build the town but to make it more energy-efficient and serve as a model for other towns looking to create sustainability and entrepreneurship. 

The initiative has caught the eye of national leaders, and Morgan County Judge Executive Tim Conley has been invited to attend the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago on June 13 as a member of the Residential Energy Efficiency Working Group.  This according to former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller on his web site, The Recovering Politician. (Miller is a Democrat and Conley is a Republican). 

After the tornado killed seven people and destroyed 400 homes, businesses, and government structures, the community began rebuilding with energy efficient and cost-effective techniques.  At the conference Conley will provide insight on “rebuilding roughly half of the 300 residential homes that were lost to the storm,” Miller writes. 

The solution West Liberty came up with was to construct “150 affordable, highly energy-efficient factory-built and site-built homes,” Miller reports.  “The three-year project includes a $27 million investment of equity, grants, debt and operating grants to complete the project in West Liberty and scale innovations piloted for other disaster response efforts and affordable housing projects for factory-built homes across the nation. 

Many will recall the bruising but unsuccessful effort by Democrat Party leaders (both at the local and state levels) to block Judge Conley’s bid for re-election to a second term in 2006.  Thankfully, the world has moved on and the ironies called to mind by Miller’s story are pleasant to contemplate.  To wit:

• Jonathan Miller, a Democrat stalwart whose party virtually bet the farm trying to defeat Conley.  A Harvard graduate from Louisville, Miller served as national director of Students for Gore in 1988 when Al Gore was running for President, later worked for Gore when he was Vice President in the Clinton Administration, and also served two terms as Kentucky State Treasurer, and later as Finance Secretary for Gov. Beshear.
• Tim Conley is a County Judge and a graduate of Morgan County High School from Honeymoon Holler.
• The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation established by former Democrat President Bill Clinton, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.  CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEO’s, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media.  To date CGI members have made more than 2,300 commitments designed “to improve the lives” of over 400 million people in more than 180 countries.  When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at more than $73.1 billion.  Clearly, the Clinton Global Initiative is no small potatoes.

As for Judge Conley’s invitation to speak at the CGI’s international forum in Chicago next week, congratulations to him.  He’s one of our own and proof certain that country-bred common sense, sincerity, and competence trump lots of things, including partisan politics, and that’s as it should be.

Click here to join the great work being done by Rebuilding West Liberty.