Re-elected Beshear Still Taking Orders from Big Coal

Coming on the heels of the election, this initially seemed to me to be the typical clearing out of professionals to make room for campaign contributors and their idiot nephews.

Tom Loftus at the Courier:

Without explanation, the Beshear administration on Tuesday fired Carl Campbell as commissioner of the state Department for Natural Resources.

Campbell was notified in a brief letter from the Energy and Environment Cabinet’s personnel office that his services “are no longer needed.”

The letter, released late Tuesday by the cabinet, says Campbell — who was a non-merit political appointee — was fired “without cause.”

SNIP

Campbell, a career environmental regulator who served a previous stint as commissioner of the department, did not return phone messages left late Tuesday at his home.

Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council, praised Campbell’s service as an environmental regulator and called the firing “very disturbing.”

“Commissioner Campbell has done an excellent job during this most recent stint as commissioner under very difficult circumstances,” FitzGerald said. “One would have hoped that in a second term, the Beshear administration would want to create some legacy more meaningful than just having lasted eight years.”

He added: “We’ve seen significant damage done to the environmental programs and significant politicization of the management of these environmental programs in this administration.”

SNIP

The Department for Natural Resources’ responsibilities include running the state’s mine licensing, surface mine reclamation, and mine-safety programs. As commissioner, Campbell was paid an annual salary of $95,445.

Two years ago this month Peters fired Ron Mills as director of mine permits in the department. Mills filed suit in Franklin Circuit Court alleging he was fired because of his attempts to enforce the law. The administration has denied the charge, and the lawsuit is pending.

In his recent re-election campaign, Beshear received strong financial support from the coal industry. Coal and energy interests contributed at least $530,000 to his campaign since it began in late 2009 or to the Kentucky Democratic Party within the last year.

Page One Kentucky smells methane and coal dust, and they're probably right:

Jim Booth and his friends donated at least $40,000 to Steve Beshear’s re-election campaign. They’re staunch Republicans, hate the Environmental Protection Agency. Booth spoke at Leadership Kentucky bashing the EPA, if you recall.

But they gave $40K. And mysteriously Carl Campbell, commissioner of the Department for Natural Resources, was canned yesterday.

Isn’t that suspicious? An honest Environment Cabinet employee gets canned after some hardcore donors raise hell about the EPA and mountaintop removal. Funny how that works.

We hear federal regulators are about to set foot in Kentucky soon and that won’t necessarily go so well for the Beshear crew.

Big Coal owns this state. It used to hold it in partnership with Big Tobacco, but with the fall of that giant, Big Coal is sole proprietor.