Above: McCord testifies at budget hearings. FILE PHOTO Tennessee Commission of Labor and Workforce Development The Business Journal: When you took this job, you had no way of knowing you would end up dealing with the fallout from a pandemic. Now, it falls to your department to help Tennessee citizens and businesses in an environment of relatively high unemployment rates and improvable workforce participatio ...

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Boyd Sports, LLC has announced it will assume the management contract of the Kingsport franchise in the Appalachian League. Boyd Sports, which also owns the Tennessee Smokies, Johnson City Baseball, Greeneville Baseball, and Elizabethton Baseball will assume all business operations of Kingsport Baseball. “We are ecstatic that upper-level baseball will continue in Kingsport with the new look Appy League. We ...

Tennessee State Senator Rusty Crowe of Johnson City will chair the Health & Welfare Committee during the 2021 legislative session. Crowe’s name was on a long list of committee chairs announced by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally’s office Wednesday. “Rusty Crowe’s leadership of the Health and Welfare Committee has been outstanding. Rusty's steady hand and experience will continue to keep the committee on course,” ...

In a Jan. 8 letter to shareholders, Miners Exchange Bank (MEB) President and CEO Charles Ward announced the bank is selling all outstanding shares to Salvosa Group, of Winston-Salem, NC for $49.87 per share in cash. Salvosa will become the bank’s parent holding company. The transaction is unanimously supported by the MEB board, Ward said. Ward told shareholders the transaction would close sometime in Q2, an ...

Bristol Dragway will serve as one of the Sullivan County COVID-19 vaccination locations for the next two months it was announced today by officials from the track and Sullivan County Health Department. Vaccinations for Phase 1a1 and 1a2, for individuals who are 75 years of age and older, will be distributed at the Dragway starting Thursday, Jan. 7, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. The daily schedule is subject to change ...

There has been anecdotal evidence in recent months indicating the Appalachian Highlands is becoming an attractive option for those looking to relocate. The Johnson City Area Home Builders Association and various quasi-governmental agencies have reported an influx of phone calls from people around the United States looking to move to our region. Now there is some tangible data to support those anecdotal repo ...

Despite steady rises during the month of December, gas prices remained unchanged during the first week of 2021 according to AAA. As a result, Tennessee remains the 10th least expensive market in the nation. “Holiday road travel was down at least 25 percent,” said AAA spokeswomen Megan Cooper. “With fewer people on the road, Tennessee motorists saw little change at the pump from the last week of 2020 to the ...

The week of Christmas brought fresh hope to Tennessee and Virginia as the newest approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19 arrived in both states. The Moderna vaccine was delivered on the heels of the Pfizer vaccine and is already being administered at sites throughout Tennessee and Virginia. Tennessee was slated to receive an initial allocation of a total of 115,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine while V ...

For the first time since March, Tennessee motorists are finding prices at the pump over $2 per gallon. Tennessee gas prices, on average, continue to trend upward, rising another six cents over last week. The Tennessee Gas Price average is now $2.04 which is nearly 15 cents more than one month ago and 28 cents less than one year ago.  Tennesseans who took a holiday road tri ...