Governor Beshear and Congressman Comer attend announcement at Metcalfe County Industrial Park

EDMONTON, Ky. – Governor Andy Beshear was in Metcalfe County to announce a grant for improvements at a building in the Metcalfe County Industrial Park that will house Pennington Stave & Cooperage.

The governor and Congressman James Comer also spoke about current political events with the media.

Metcalfe County’s Industrial Park will soon be home to a new business.

The company will manufacture staves and barrels for bourbon and whiskey production, building on positive momentum in the growing spirits industry in the commonwealth.

The business expects to have this facility up and running by the end of 2021.

Once the company gets production underway, it will create jobs with above-average wages and will hopefully encourage more industrial growth in the area.

“These jobs are going to reach every part of our Commonwealth, that we’re going to make sure that no one is left out. And 60 new jobs in Metcalfe County, with it just being a start with a chance to grow, is incredible. These are also jobs of the future in an area, bourbon, that is growing faster than anybody,” Beshear said.

Congressman James Comer says he is concerned about how the incoming business will fill those 60 positions in the current hiring climate.

“The federal government and some states, Kentucky included, are incentivizing people not to work. That’s wrong. That’s unfair to the people that are working and paying taxes. The biggest challenge this business will have will be finding workers,” said Comer.

When asked about the employee shortage and the impact unemployment is having on that issue, Beshear said the additional unemployment from COVID relief money ends soon, and baby boomers are retiring in droves.

“People are quitting right now more than ever before and they don’t qualify for unemployment, so you can’t put that there. And then we’re asking people who have worked in a gig economy to all of a sudden work one job doing the same thing for decades at a time. So we have to understand that we are at a place of rapid transition and just red or blue arguments, people trying to turn it into politics, doesn’t help us fill them and doesn’t help us create the workforce of the future,” Beshear said.

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment rates in the state during June of 2019 were 4.1%, while in April of 2020, unemployment rates reached a peak of 16.9%. While in June of this year, unemployment rates had sunk back down to 4.4 percent in the Commonwealth, near pre-pandemic levels.

In another topic, both the governor and the congressman spoke about the Delta variant of COVID-19.

Beshear spoke specifically on the issue of Warren County schools choosing not to require masks.

“If a school system does not require masking, they’ve got whole rooms 20 plus students that can’t even get the vaccine right now. It’s simply not going to work. So will we have the courage to make the decisions to give our kids the maximum number of days in school or are we so worried about a couple of parents or other folks in the community that we don’t do what’s right. This Delta variant is serious. It can cause harm to younger people and we got to do the right thing, and that’s the universal masking in all of our school systems,” Beshear said.

“The information I received in Washington this week is that 97% of the people who are hospitalized right now and on ventilators were not vaccinated. So I’m against mandatory vaccinations, but I’ve been vaccinated, my wife’s been vaccinated, and I encourage people to talk to their doctors about vaccination rates,” said Comer.

Beshear said the Delta variant has hit the red zone, meaning more than .025% of the population are testing positive per day, in just about every county so he says he wants the state to follow all CDC guidelines and mask up.