Underreported: What Happened When Government Tried to Fix a Coal Town

• September 17, 2017

PAINTSVILLE, Ky.—When Ben Larrabee heard about a new government-funded job training program for the digital age that promised to turn “coal country” into “code country,” he stopped looking for other jobs.

“The thing that got 800-plus people to apply and go through the process was that it promised jobs that would run from $30,000 to $40,000 a year,” Larrabee told The Daily Signal.

The program, a product of President Barack Obama’s TechHire Initiative of 2015, was so popular it earned its own segment on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

But what “The Daily Show” failed to mention is that the program produced such underwhelming results, government officials ended their multimillion-dollar contract with Interapt, the software company hired to administer the TechHire Eastern Kentucky initiative, known as TEKY.

Despite this, Louisville, Kentucky-based Interapt is off in places as far as Buffalo, Wyoming, soliciting more taxpayer dollars to replicate the program.

“Sometimes when you’re promised something, you may be being lied to,” Paintsville Mayor Bill Runyon warned.

For our latest episode of “Underreported,” The Daily Signal traveled to this small town in Eastern Kentucky to learn the truth about this government-funded job training program. Watch the video report above, and read more about the program here.

Kelsey Bolar | Contributor

Kelsey was a senior contributor covering education reform and social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Send an email to Kelsey.

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