NORTHERN KENTUCKY
Toyota Announces New V-8 Engine Plant in Alabama

According to Japanese newspaper Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, Toyota is planning to build a new engine plant in the South, probably in Tennessee, Alabama or Georgia. Projected cost for the project ranges from $266 million to $444 million. The engines made there would travel through Kentucky on their way to being installed in Tundra pickups, made in Princeton, Indiana. Those V-8 engines are currently made in Japan.

While the Princeton plant currently produces over 129,000 trucks and SUVs, the transfer of Sienna minivan production from the Georgetown plant to Princeton (after an $800 expansion) will increase total vehicle production there to 300,000 by 2003. A $450 million expansion to the company’s Cambridge, Ontario plant will also be completed by 2003. Early in January, Toyota announced a new North American production record of 1.1 million light trucks and cars, an increase of 3.9 percent from 1999. That figure was led by a total of 739,397 Camrys, Avalons and Siennas made at the Georgetown plant, which also makes four-cylinder and V-6 engines. The company also announced a $2.1 billion share buyback, funded by profits.

In another development, Toyota announced a $50 million expansion of its Buffalo, West Virginia plant to accommodate building 40,000 more 4-cylinder engines per year. By 2003, some 200 new jobs will be created, and the plant will produce engines for five vehicles, including the Sienna.

BEREA
Lift Truck Maker Grows after Illinois Plant Closes

The NACCO Industries Inc. plant in Berea should benefit from an increased workload after the announced closing of the company’s lift truck operation in Danville, Ill. which is expected to gradually phase out operations over the next year and a half. That move will put 680 people out of work. NACCO Materials Handling Group makes lift trucks under for the Hyster and Yale brands. A few weeks prior to the announcement, NACCO had received preliminary approval from the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority for up to $3 million in incentives to support a planned $18 million, 200-job expansion at its Berea operation.






LOUISVILLE
UPS Will Charge More, Hire More, Educate More

UPS expects to add 1,500 more jobs in 2002 before reassessing its capacity needs and its abilities to attract more people in a low-unemployment economy, according to company spokesmen. The company’s Metropolitan College program has attracted an enrollment of 2,000 students/workers, and hopes to reach 3,000 eventually. The Metro College program was recognized by Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman as a “best practice in workforce development” at the 2000 National Skills Summit. It was also named the country’s top workforce training program in 1999 by Business Facilities magazine.

The company is spending over $1 million this school year to facilitate higher education for its employees at both the University of Louisville and Jefferson Community Technical College.

Another factor affecting hiring rates was the company’s raising of its shipping rates – up 3.1 percent for ground service, 3.7 percent for air service and 2.9 percent for international service. The announcements coincidentally followed a 4.9 percent hike in air express rates by rival FedEx Corp.

STATE
Kentucky Population Hits 4 Million Mark

The release of U.S. Census 2000 revealed that Kentucky’s population was 4,041,769 last year, an increase of almost 10 percent since 1990. That rate of growth dwarfed the state’s anemic 0.7 percent rate in the 1980s, but the state dropped from 23rd to 25th in the nation in total population. The country’s population grew by 13.2 percent since 1990, to a total of over 281.4 million. Kentucky’s census response rate of 66 percent was higher than every other southern state except Virginia (72 percent). The national rate was 67 percent, two points higher than the rate from 1990.

Like its southern neighbors (except Mississippi), Kentucky, with six representatives in the U.S. House, will maintain that level of representation. Many of the Rust Belt states will lose a representative, with New York and Pennsylvania losing two. Kentucky lost a representative after the 1990 Census, and has not gained one since 1880.

After county census results are released in the spring, the General Assembly will convene a special session to redraw district boundaries in order to reflect population shifts within the state.

States still have the option to use either the official U.S. head count figures or statistically adjusted figures.

Economists with the University of Kentucky recently projected that the state’s population will continue to increase by an average of 32,500 residents a year through 2003.

STATE
Governor Patton Says Economy is Key to State of the Commonwealth

In his State of the Commonwealth speech in early January, Governor Paul Patton noted that state revenues are within $33 million (one half of one percent) of budget estimates, and lauded the state’s highest bond rating ever. The Budget Reserve Trust Fund stands at $278 million, 4.1 percent of the annual General Fund Revenue. Among the economic statistics quoted by Patton were increases in average wages, job growth and manufacturing jobs that outpaced national trends, including a 12 percent increase in manufacturing jobs.

As the General Assembly’s 30-day annual session began, the governor repeated calls for a more fair taxation structure that eases the burden on the working poor, and for universal curbside garbage and recycling pickup, among other solid waste measures.



STATE
Manufacturers Pursue Training Projects, Build Certification Program

Associated Industries of Kentucky (AIK) and the Kentucky Manufacturing Skill Standards Super Consortium (KMSSC) have banded together with the Commonwealth to launch the Manufacturing Skill Standards Certification Program, designed to offer a standardized statewide education curriculum created by employers that certifies basic or advanced workplace skills.

“This program helps us establish a basic benchmark for manufacturing employees throughout Kentucky,” says Craig Woolcott, human resources manager for Mikron industries in Richmond. “My colleagues in Washington state and Illinois say this knocks their socks off.”

The program was put together by a task force that included 26 industry representatives from around the state. “The development of these standards has been business-driven from the start,” says AIK vice president Vince Senior.

Funding for the program comes from the private sector, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, and matching funds from the Bluegrass State Skills Corporation.

In related developments, the BSSC recently approved over $1.2 million in funds for worker training projects. Among the 57 projects were initiatives by five companies in Bowling Green totaling over $95,000 in funding to train almost 500 workers, and by eight companies in the burgeoning city of Hopkinsville, where almost $150,000 in funding will be put toward the skills upgrade of 672 workers. Among the companies taking fullest advantage of available programs is Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America in Maysville, which received over $99,000 for a Skills Training Investment Credit project and over $119,000 for other worker training projects.

LOUISVILLE
Stites & Harbison is Latest Large Law Firm to Grow Larger Through Merger

Stites & Harbison of Louisville has merged with the Nashville firm of Farris, Warfield & Kanaday. The firm will now operate the Nashville office, and oversee the activities of that office’s 36 attorneys, part of a 200-lawyer team spread across eight cities, including Atlanta and Washington, D.C. The Nashville firm, founded in 1972, has built its reputation in the banking and real estate, commercial finance, business law and commercial litigation areas, with a particular litigation emphasis in creditors’ rights and employment. Among its clients are GE Capital Corporation, Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc. The Travelers Insurance Company and SETECH, Inc.

“We’ve been courted by numerous firms of all shapes and sizes,” said Stuart Campbell, Farris, Warfield & Kanaday’s Managing Partner. “But Stites & Harbison clearly has a vision most compatible to ours, along with a shared commitment to top-flight client service.” Stites & Harbison chairman Kennedy Helm III noted, “We now have a regional footprint with top-notch lawyers in four contiguous states which include offices in two of the South’s money centers, three state capitals and the region’s most dynamic economies.”

LOUISVILLE
Growing Outer Loop Waste Facility Participates in Two Experiments

The Outer Loop Recycling and Disposal Facility in Jefferson County will soon be participating in two experimental programs – one designed to decompose the garbage faster, and another designed to maintain a barrier between that garbage and the earth and groundwater surrounding it.

Chipped tires from the enormous Bridgestone/Firestone recall last year, processed by Central Ohio Contractors outside Columbus, will help to form a leachate barrier around the landfill, where operator Waste Management Inc. has recently requested permission to double in size. Some of that leachate will be part of the other experiment, which will pump air, chemicals and water into the landfill to quicken the decomposition process. One byproduct of the program – methane gas – will be captured and sold to businesses such as recently signed customer General Electric Appliance Park for energy production use.

The Outer Loop facility took in nearly 295,000 tons of garbage from July to September last year, accepting loads from an estimated 500 trucks per day.

LOUISVILLE
PGA to Follow Through with Senior Championship at Valhalla in 2004

After two successful turns with the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in 1996 and 2000, the PGA of America is coming back in 2004. But it’s not for that year’s PGA Championship, which the organization abruptly pulled from Louisville last year in favor of Wisconsin’s Whistling Straits. Instead, the organization has chosen to stage the 65th Senior PGA Championship at Valhalla. The tournament, first conducted in 1937 at Augusta National (home of the Masters) has been played at PGA National Golf Club in Florida since 1982, but will begin rotating through other courses this year, stopping at Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey, then at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio in 2002. In 2007, Valhalla will host the 37th Ryder Cup Matches.








STATE
National Dotcoms Hit the Delete Button, Watch CEOs Depart

According to the Associated Press, Internet firms laid off 10,459 people during the last half of 2000. Those layoffs increased 19 percent from November to December. Although not all IPOs are Internet-related, the 370 IPOs in 2000 lost 14 percent on average, more than the 8.5 percent loss during 1990, and a reversal from last year, when IPOs tripled in value. In two days in December, the following companies hit the delete button:

• Xpedior, an Internet consulting firm, cut 32 percent of its workforce and closed some offices.
• DoubleClick, an Internet ad agency, laid off 150, or seven percent of its workforce.
• Gaylord Entertainment pulled out of the Internet business and laid off 85 employees.
• Babygear.com shut down and filed for bankruptcy.
• Women.com cut 85 jobs, or 25 percent of its workforce.
• Viant Corporation, an Internet consulting firm, announced it would cut its work force by 125 people.
• Nordstrom’s will cut employment at its catalog and Internet subsidiary by three percent.

LEXINGTON
Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce Acts Fast to Get Quick

In early February, Robert Quick, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Evansville Chamber of Commerce for the past seven years, will begin a new job as president of the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce. Quick, who has served in both agricultural and business development capacities in Illinois, Iowa and Indiana, takes over from the retired Bob Douglass. Among his notable achievements in Indiana was helping to push through state approval of extending the I-69 corridor from Indianapolis through Evansville.










STATE
After Closing Campton Plant, Celestica Signs Major Agreement with Motorola

Celestica, an electronics contract manufacturer that shut down its plant in Campton last spring just in advance of the manufacturing pull-out of Lexington by big client Lexmark, has now struck a mammoth deal with Motorola that will bring in $1 billion over a three-year period. The company spun off from IBM in 1994, and supplies 50 companies at 33 plants worldwide, making its profits through providing outsourcing capabilities for OEMs. Its contracts with companies like Lucent and Motorola focus largely on the making of wireless and other communications equipment, a sector company leaders have targeted to produce as much as 45 percent of company sales. The company recently purchased cell phone factories in England and Brazil from Japanese giant NEC, while also acquiring two Italian plants from IBM. Celestica’s stock value shot up 60 percent over the course of 2000, and its profits in the year’s second quarter were up 212 percent over 1999. Over 200 jobs – nearly eight percent of Wolfe County’s employment – were lost because of the Campton closing. Motorola is shutting down its 2,500-employee cell phone plant in Illinois.

STATE
In the Wake of Christmas, Some Retailers Close Ranks and Stores

After a sluggish fall and holiday season, Montgomery Ward has declared bankruptcy, initiating immediate liquidation sales after almost 130 years in business. The company’s store in Lexington will close in short order. Sears is closing 89 specialty stores nationwide, including one in Louisville. J.C. Penney is closing 47 stores, including Kentucky locations in Alexandria and Madisonville. According to the Associated Press, here are same-store sales figures for 2000 from some other leading retailers: Wal-Mart, up 0.3 percent; Kmart, up 0.7 percent; Dillard’s, down four percent; May Department Stores, up one percent; Limited, unchanged; Abercrombie & Fitch, down 11 percent; AnnTaylor, down 0.3 percent; and Talbot’s, up 12.9 percent.

STATE
Lexington Educator Slated to Head Richmond-Based Center for Safety

Former Dunbar High School principal Jon Akers, named state principal of the year in 1998, has taken over as director of the Kentucky Center for School Safety, replacing Lois Adams Rogers, who returned to the state Department of Education last year. Bill Scott had served as interim director since that time.

According to a report released by the center in December, incidents involving aggravated assault, theft, arson and handguns fell off over the past year. Suspensions, fights and incidents involving defiance of authority and threats also fell off dramatically. “The report shows that safety in Kentucky schools appears to mirror the improvement in school safety nationwide, and is consistent with the falling crime rate in society overall,” said Bill Scott in the report.

However, the number of sex-related incidents rose. Another concern is the reporting of drug incidents. According to the report’s chief analyst, Dr. Robert Illback of R.E.A.C.H. of Louisville, Inc., only 75 percent of drug abuse incidents at Kentucky schools last year were reported to police.

STATE
Kentucky’s Biggest Airports Look to Future as They Eye Expansion Efforts

Activity is heating up at the Lexington, Northern Kentucky and Louisville airports. The Cincinnati/ Northern Kentucky International Airport board is in the midst of pushing for a fourth runway by 2006, expected to cost $85 million. Delta subsidiary Comair is taking over some flights from its parent company as Delta continues negotiations with a shrinking pilot workforce.

In Louisville, the same type of regional jet service is also growing, reflecting a national increase in regional jet service of 800 percent over the past five years. According to the airport’s marketing director Bill Rawlings, quoted by the Associated Press, Louisville’s overall boardings are up from 1,034,907 in 1992 to 1,914,098 in 1999.

Meanwhile, in a surprising move that has raised the ire of numerous groups (including the Urban County Council) the Lexington Blue Grass Airport board has voted to resurrect a proposed $80 million new runway that most thought had been tabled for good. Legal ramifications regarding eminent domain authority and other considerations are currently undergoing vigorous community debate, and yet another change in direction may be in the offing.

Business Briefs

ALBANY

• Workers at Cagle’s-Keystone Foods voted by a large margin to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 227. The same union, along with the Prewitt Organizing Fund, has been trying to organize workers at Amazon.com’s seven distribution centers, including two in Kentucky, following in the footsteps of organizers in the company’s Seattle home base. Amazon has vigorously opposed all such efforts.

BOWLING GREEN

• Western Kentucky University will receive $1.7 million in federal funds after approval of the year’s final funding bill. Among the projects are a mobile health unit for servicing resident in rural areas, expansion of the Kentucky Emergency Medical Services Academy, the Technology Innovation Challenge program, and the Office of Global Business and Entrepreneurship.

COVINGTON

• Ashland Specialty Chemical Company, a division of Ashland Inc., has entered into a strategic alliance with Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Company Ltd. in order to work on chemistries for polymer cleaning on single-wafer processing tools used in the semiconductor industry. “Our position in the Japanese market, and all of Asia, has grown dramatically in the past few years as a result of our alliances with Nagase and Nippon Zeon,” said Bob Rohlfing, business director of Ashland-ACT, a unit of Ashland Specialty Chemical Company’s Electronic Chemicals Division. “It is important for us to work together with leading equipment manufacturers like Dainippon Screen to ensure that the best possible cleaning package is provided to our customers in this growing region.”

GHENT

• North American Stainless, currently implementing a $200 million meltshop expansion, will invest an additional $130 million for further expansion at its facility in Carroll County, to be used to construct a third cold rolling mill and a third annealing and pickling line. By 2003, the company expects 52 new jobs to be filled. That brings the company’s total investment in Kentucky to nearly $1 billion. “Once again, this investment in capacity, technology and infrastructure show the confidence that NAS has in Kentucky,” said Secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development Gene Strong. The NAS facility currently employs 500 people, and is owned by Acerinox, S.A. of Madrid, Spain, one of only five major producers of stainless steel flat products in the world.

HENDERSON

• Montreal, Quebec-based Van Houtte Inc. will reopen the former Millstone coffee plant, closed earlier this year by Procter & Gamble in order to move production to New Orleans. Van Houtte is Canada’s largest gourmet coffee roasting company, and expects to produce around 2 million pounds of coffee per year at the Henderson facility.

LEXINGTON

• Fazoli’s has stepped onto the global scene by opening its first international store, a 200-seat restaurant in Manila, Philippines. According to the chain’s spokesperson, as many as 35 new restaurants will have opened in the fiscal year ending in March. The U.S. count currently stands at 370 restaurants in 31 states.
• Cities are always being compared to each other by a host of magazines according to a sweeping range of subjective criteria. Now Lexington – along with cities like Nashville, Tennessee and Portland, Oregon – will do some judging for itself. New Century Lexington is working with the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce, Lexington United, the University of Kentucky and the Lexington Urban County Government to complete a liveability study, with results to be released in the spring. Among the nine areas to be analyzed are the economic and business climate, transportation and the natural environment.
• Lexington-based Encite Commerce will run an entertainment store for SteamAudio.com listeners across the country, enabling the online radio company’s patrons (listening to one of 734 U.S. stations) to buy the music they hear by clicking a button.
• Five Thoroughbred breeders – Coolmore/Ashford, Eaton Sales, Lane’s End, Taylor Made and Three Chimneys – recently combined to form Equine Spectrum, a consortium that auctioned off 21 “no guarantee” stallion seasons for more than $1.3 million in an online auction attended by more than 80 bidders from Europe and North America.
• Keeneland, which has as part of its mission the goal of giving back to the community it inhabits, has pledged over $755,000 – or one-tenth of one percent of its total sales for the year 2000 – to 91 different organizations in central Kentucky. The dollar amount is 19 percent higher than the amount given away in 1999, and includes $50,000 donations to Chrysalis House, YMCA of Central Kentucky and the McDowell Cancer Research Foundation; $25,000 to the Hispanic Initiative; and $18,000 to the Kentucky Independent College Foundation.
• Clark Material Handling Company completed the sales of its Blue Giant unit for $11 million to TBM Holdings, Inc. The Blue Giant division is not a debtor in the company’s Chapter 11 proceeding, filed last April. Meanwhile, Clark secured approximately $15 million in working capital financing for its subsidiary in Europe, increasing that division’s credit line to $25 million. Clark’s operation in Lexington has sold the company’s former sales and engineering center to Mas-Hamilton Group, and Clark’s 150 employees are relocating to new offices in Alumni Park.
• The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, officially merged with Breeders’ Cup Ltd. as of Jan. 1, has hired Host Communications to develop a sponsorship strategy. The news comes as Magna Entertainment chairman Frank Stronach has agreed to place his seven tracks back into the fold of NTRA membership after agreeing to concessions made by the NTRA regarding its leadership structure. The organization continues to mend fences with the various other tracks that had followed Stronach’s example. Meanwhile, Host has also been selected by the American Bicycle Association to secure corporate sponsorship sales for the association’s BMX racing activities, marking the marketing and management company’s first foray into extreme sports.
• The Blood-Horse Inc. added to its family of publications with the purchase of The Equine Image, an equestrian art magazine, from Heartland Communications Group in Iowa.

LOUISVILLE

• In its fervor to win the merger vote, the group Vote Yes for Unity overspent its $1 million budget by about $250,000, primarily on media buys. So letters signed by prominent merger proponents went out to about 1,800 Greater Louisville Inc. members asking for donations to help cover the shortfall. Merger opponents spent about $70,000.
• Thirty-four area McDonald’s restaurants were recently sold back to the corporation by franchisee G&M Foods Inc. Almost all of the affected 233 employees have been retained. G&M remains the franchisee for four McDonald’s restaurants, continuing a business relationship that’s been in place in Louisville for over 30 years.
• According to Zagat Survey’s “2001 Top U.S. Hotels, Resorts and Spas Guide,” Louisville’s Seelbach Hilton and Camberley Brown hotels are among the nation’s best. The only other Kentucky lodging to make the list was the Inn at Shaker Village in Harrodsburg.
• In late November, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway firm acquired 174,500 shares – or one percent – of Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc.
• Brad DeVries has taken over as president and CEO of Paul Semonin Realtors after the departure of 27-year veteran George Gans, who will remain the company’s chairman. DeVries came to Semonin in 1999 after seven years at NTS Corp., also based in Louisville.
• The Flooring Gallery has acquired nine furniture and flooring stores in Kentucky and Indiana, among them several Kinnaird & Francke Interiors outlets. CarpetMax had bought the Kinnaird & Francke stores in 1994, changed its name to Flooring America, and declared bankruptcy last summer.
• Jeffersonville, Indiana-based Great Dane Power Equipment Co. was purchased by Deere & Co. Great Dane, a four-year-old maker of commercial mowers, had sales of close to $23 million in 1999, and will retain its name brand as part of Deere’s Worldwide Commercial & Consumer Equipment Division. Deere had sales of $13 billion for fiscal 2000.

NORTHERN KENTUCKY

• Catholic Health Initiatives will close its Louisville and Cincinnati offices in order to consolidate operations in a new facility in Erlanger – one of six remaining regional offices across the nation. The organization, based in Denver, oversees Caritas Medical Center, as well as dozens of other hospitals and long-term care facilities around the country.
• Cinergy Corp. distribution subsidiary Union Light, Heat and Power Co. has filed a request with the Kentucky Public Service Commission asking for approval to raise its natural gas rate by 21 percent, reflecting the tremendous spike in gas prices caused by dwindling reserves and severe cold weather across the nation.
• Au-Ve-Co (Auto Vehicle Parts Company) Products is moving into a 170,000 s.f. manufacturing, distribution and office facility in Cold Spring next July, currently under construction by Paul Hemmer Companies. The company, located in Northern Kentucky since 1916, makes over 14,000 different items in the auto hardware and specialty fastener categories.

OWENSBORO

• Daviess County Public Schools Superintendent Stu Silberman was named the Kentucky Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators. Silberman was one of three finalists for Education Commissioner earlier this year.

PADUCAH

• Computer Services, Inc. posted a 37 percent increase in third quarter revenues over last year, with $15.5 million, largely from increased demand for the company’s imaging and EFT services. The August acquisition of First Commerce Technologies added close to $13 million in annualized revenue, though increased operating expenses related to the acquisition ate into profits. “We are working quickly to integrate the CSI-West operations, personnel and products into CSI and expect the acquisition to be accretive to our earnings before the end of fiscal 2002,” said CSI president and CEO Steven A. Powless.
• The American Quilter’s Society announced that it will continue to hold its annual show and contest at Paducah’s Julian Carroll Convention Center. A proposed 50,000 s.f. addition to the center was a major factor in the decision.

PIKEVILLE

• The Hatfield-McCoy feud is now a marketable commodity, and will attract $500,000 in federal funds to commemorate sites in Kentucky where members of the state’s McCoy clan were killed or buried. Some of the money will go toward a museum, and will be supplanted by $25,000 from Pike County Fiscal Court and $100,000 from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

SHELBYVILLE

• Citizens Union Bancorp, which operates six Citizens Union locations and three First Farmers locations, has acquired Dupont State Bank of Dupont, Indiana. Citizens, with combined assets of $400 million, will gain about $20 million in assets from the acquisition.

WHITESBURG

• A planned 26-mile pipeline to be constructed by Columbia Natural Resources Inc. may be scuttled to another route because of its proximity to historic Scuttle Hole Gap near Pine Mountain, among other factors. Settlers originally used the narrow gap to haul supplies out of Virginia. After Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Commissioner Tom Bennett refused to grant permission for the pipeline to cross a wildlife area near the mountain’s summit, and not wishing to push forward with eminent domain legal claims, Columbia is now looking for another route.

WINCHESTER

• R.P. Scherer Corp., a subsidiary of Cardinal Health Inc., will pay around $40 million for pharmaceuticals maker International Processing Corp., which, as part of the Glatt Group, has operated a 100,000 s.f. plant since 1992. The manufacturer specializes in time-release medicines, but also makes a wide variety of other pharmaceuticals.

STATE

• Columbia Gas of Kentucky has dropped Nicole Energy Services of Columbus, Ohio, and Kentucky Natural Gas of Versailles from its customer choice program due to failure to supply product. Customer supply will not be affected, according to Columbia. Ten percent of the company’s customers have already migrated to the marketers for their gas.
• According to Kentucky Agri-News, the state’s Dec. 1 burley tobacco production forecast of 262.5 million pounds, down 31 percent from 1999, accounted for 64 percent of the eight-state burley belt’s overall production forecast of 410.2 million pounds. For the first three weeks of the selling season, burley belt sales included 142.8 million pounds across the auction floor and 53.7 million pounds through direct contract sales. The Tobacco Task Force convened by the state legislature reported that the nearly 50 percent of burley farmers who chose in 2000 to contract directly with Phillip Morris – rather than go the traditional auction route – received between $8 and $13 more per 100-weight.
• According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Kentucky Mining Board has allowed at least 98 people convicted of federal mine-safety violations in Kentucky since 1990 to retain certifications to work in the state. No company licenses have ever been suspended or revoked.
• Fifth Third Bank completed its buyout of Maxus Investment Group of Cleveland, adding its $1.4 billion in assets under management to a total of over $23 billion under management and $44 billion in total assets. Fifth Third also completed its acquisition of Ottawa Financial Corp. and subsidiary AmeriBank, bringing in an additional $1.1 billion in assets and 24 offices in Michigan.
• For the second time in three years, BACK Construction received the Outstanding Remodeling Project Award from The Home Builders Association of Lexington. The Remodelers Council of the Home Builders Association of Louisville named Glen E. Stuckel as Louisville Remodeler of the Year 2000.
• Nashville-based HCA–The Healthcare Company, formerly headquartered in Louisville, will pay over $840 million in agreeing to a guilty plea for defrauding the federal government. Civil lawsuits alleging doctor kickback payments and overcharging the government are still pending. The company owns three hospitals in Kentucky: Greenview Regional in Bowling Green, Frankfort Regional in Frankfort and Samaritan in Lexington. Most of the civil settlement will go to the federal government, with $13.6 million going to state governments to cover losses incurred because of the company’s Medicaid fraud.
• According to a survey conducted by the Cabinet for Health Services, the proportion of retailers selling tobacco products to minors plunged from 19.7 percent in 1999 to just over 13 percent in 2000. The range of violations by county ranged from over 25 percent to around two percent. According to a study of 1,170 retail stores conducted by the Cabinet for Health Services, the state's proportion of retailers selling tobacco products to minors plunged from 19.7 percent in 1999 to just over 13 percent in 2000. By county, the lawbreaking percentage ranged from over 25 percent to around two percent. In order to keep receiving approximately $7.5 million in federal funding from the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, the state must keep the violator rate under 20 percent.
• Only 1,430 physicians and dentists – out of 15,427 surveyed – responded to a Legislative Research Commission inquiry into the effects of a bill enacted last year penalizing insurers for not paying claims within 30 days. While the overall impact has been routinely positive, a small segment of providers (just over five percent) still found tardiness to be a problem.
  

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