Kentucky House Approves Bill to Reduce Emergency-Trained Workers in Small Coal Mines usnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from usnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Kentucky House voted Monday to allow the state's smallest coal mining operations to reduce the number of miners with emergency medical training assigned for each underground shift. The bill's critics warned it would roll back an important safeguard enacted years ago following a Kentucky mining fatality. “It truly troubles me to think that we could potentially be trading the safety of our coal mining families for what appears to be a nominal financial benefit, if anything at all,” said Democratic state Rep. Ashley Tackett Laferty, who represents a coal-producing region in eastern Kentucky.
Republicans in the GOP-dominated Kentucky House of Representatives passed a bill Monday that a long-time coal mine safety advocate says would put miners at risk by weakening a key protection