By Scott Robertson The tweet Ron Ramsey sent Friday, April 22 read simply, “The @tnsenate of the 109th General Assembly has adjourned sine die.” The Latin term at the end means there is no date set for resumption – the business of the session is finished. With the end of the session, and Ramsey’s prior announcement he would not seek re-election after 20 years in the state senate (plus two terms in the state ...

By Jeff Keeling With institutional knowledge as important as ever given the changes swirling around Wellmont Health System, leaders at Wellmont no longer have a long-solid option when financial questions arise: Go ask Alice. Alice Pope left the system after 16 years to become CFO at HonorHealth, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based not-for-profit hospital system. Her last day at Wellmont, where she had been CFO since ...

By Scott Robertson We’re very honored here at The Business Journal to partner with the city of Kingsport, Tenn., to publish the city’s official centennial publication. It’s something I’ve been working toward since having a conversation with my old boss Ken Maness several months ago. Ken, who gave me my first job out of college, selling radio advertising on what was then Oldies 104.9 WKOS, and whose bio I ha ...

By Jeff Keeling When you deal directly with potholes, pill heads and peoples’ education, political leadership can be difficult. Local and regional leaders haven’t the luxury of layers of lesser governments or bureaucracies between themselves and the citizens they are charged to serve. If they do a poor job, act irresponsibly or lack the fortitude to make hard but necessary decisions, the results are readily ...

By Scott Robertson Travis Cunningham, production manager at Microporous, Inc., has seen good days and he has seen bad days, and he knows the difference. The good days, he says, are finally here. For most of the last decade, Cunningham and his colleagues at the Piney Flats manufacturing facility felt they were working in the dark. “They (new management) have come in and turned on the lights,” he says. The da ...

By Scott Robertson Bristol, Va.-based mining company Alpha Natural Resources hopes to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy by June 30 after a planned auction of assets, which should net the company $500 million or more in cash. The auction is scheduled to take place May 16. Alpha announced March 8 it had filed reorganization plan documents in United States Bankruptcy Court, which, together with the planned auc ...

By Scott Robertson Last month’s news from the King Institute for Regional Economic Studies that Southwest Virginia individuals bring in a shockingly low amount of income from wages and salaries (a little more than half) with government transfer payments (social security, medical programs) making up a rapidly growing piece of the income pie set me thinking. With the tobacco economy gone from the Southwest an ...

By Jeff Keeling  Work groups are meeting in Southwest Virginia with health care access, quality and cost on their minds. An advisory group is making the rounds in Tennessee, seeking input on measures for an “index” that would grade any merged hospital system on its effectiveness in a variety of areas. Health officials in state capitals Nashville and Richmond are scrutinizing reams of documents and proposals ...

By Jeff Keeling When Tennessee’s commissioner of economic and community development struck a bullish tone on the state’s economy during a recent visit to the Tri-Cities, the role of education rang through clearly. Randy Boyd exhorted local economic development leaders to focus as much on education as they do on things like available land. “Everybody’s got dirt,” he put it. He also touted, with good reason, ...

E. 1. The Authority shall recommend for approval by the Commissioner a proposed cooperative agreement if it determines that the benefits likely to result from the proposed cooperative agreement outweigh the disadvantages likely to result from a reduction in competition from the proposed cooperative agreement. 2. In evaluating the potential benefits of a proposed cooperative agreement, the Authority shall co ...