Q&A: Lincoln County House candidates respond to resident concerns about infrastructure, jobs and bringing young people back to the area

Mountain State Spotlight traveled around Lincoln County to ask residents what they want to hear candidates talk about as they ask for votes. Here are some questions based on those conversations:

The 30th District in the West Virginia House of Delegates encompasses almost the entirety of Lincoln County, except for the southwestern-most part. There are two candidates running for the seat: Britney Brogan, a Democrat who works as a school nurse, and Jeff Eldridge, a Republican who previously served as a Democrat in the House in the 2000s and 2010s, and defeated current delegate David Adkins in the May primary election.

Candidate responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

1. A top concern for people who live in Lincoln County is having to commute to other areas for good job opportunities. Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau also show most Lincoln Countians work outside the county and have one of the longer commuter trips in West Virginia. What would you do as a state lawmaker to provide more job opportunities so residents in your county could work closer to home?

Britney Brogan: Well, Lincoln County has a lot of land. I think we need to try to entice some businesses to come here to set up other than your typical Dollar General low paying jobs. I would like to see some agricultural-type businesses come here because we do have a lot of farmland.

And focusing on maybe some construction, industrial-type businesses would be great to see. We have a lot of industrial young people in this county, and they all tend to leave because there are no jobs available. I was one of those people. I left after I graduated college and I lived in Huntington for almost 10 years. And then I moved back home because I missed it.

I think we have a wonderful county. We need to focus on enticing some companies to come here to work and to set up their businesses so people are willing to stay and they don’t have to commute.

Context: While between 2017 and 2022, farmland decreased in West Virginia by 3.5 million acres, the amount of farmland in Lincoln County increased by 21%, according to the 2022 Agricultural Census . According to the U.S. Census Bureau , about 43% of Lincoln County residents over the age of 16 are in the workforce — that’s about 10% less than are working in the state overall.

Jeff Eldridge: That’s a good question, buddy.

A lawmaker creates a law or takes a law off the books. I mean, as far as helping trying to develop — I’m definitely pushing the Hobet Project. I was there when we started that. It’s the future. Some of the prettiest land in that whole project is in Lincoln County. Additionally, you know, it was part of our legislation to get elk back in West Virginia, Southern West Virginia. And that project is going to be the third and final stocking of that. That’s going to bring tourism and stuff like.

I’ve been very active in getting rivers cleaned up, getting more access to the rivers for tourism. I’m gonna continue that. Need more access. I’m definitely going to work on that. I’ve got two water projects I really want to work on. Really the last two big, big projects in Lincoln County for infrastructure to help develop the land.

Context: The Hobet Mine was a more than 5,000-acre strip mine straddling the Lincoln/Boone county line. The mine went defunct in 2015. In 2020, Gov. Jim Justice announced that the land would be redeveloped for commercial use, as well as use by the National Guard and development for recreational opportunities. As of 2022, a 3,000-acre solar farm was announced for the site.

The reintroduction of elk began in 2016, after neighboring Virginia and Kentucky successfully rehabilitated their populations to the point limited hunting seasons could be opened. West Virginia’s herd has not grown to that point.

2. The condition of infrastructure — roads, cell service and water in particular — were also a concern for Lincoln County residents. What would you do as a lawmaker to improve the county’s infrastructure?

Britney Brogan: It’s a huge problem. Our current water system here where I live is dilapidated and crumbling. We need to get some major grant money in this county to fix it. The problem is the lines for our water system are approximately 70 years old. They keep bursting and rupturing and every time they do, it allows sediment and mud and everything to get into the lines. It’s just horrible.

In order to fix it, though, it’s going to require large amounts of money. So that’s one of my hopes, as a lawmaker, is to be able to find grant money to fix our current water system.

I know there’s a lot of residents on the opposite side of the county from me that don’t even have access to a public water system. That needs to be addressed. I’ve heard it at county commission meetings that I’ve been to. People come and speak and say, “You know, you’ve been promising us water for years, and we still don’t have it.”

So, as a lawmaker, that would be one of my goals, would be to find either federal or state grant money to bring to our county to fix our water system, and also bring water to the folks that currently don’t have it.

MSS: Do people have to rely on well water in that part of the county?

Some people have to rely on wells or they purchase it. You can actually go to our failing water system and take tanks there and fill it up and cart it back to you to your home. And a lot of people do that. Or they just have wells that are horrible. A lot of the water here is contaminated, either with sulfur or iron or you name it.

Context: In recent years, the Lincoln Public Service District, which serves the northeastern part of the county and parts of southern Kanawha County, has been cited by the West Virginia Public Service Commission as a “ distressed ” utility, defined as a utility that’s not meeting financial, operational or managerial regulatory standards. The utility was publicly called out by the PSC in September 2023 for not complying with the commission’s orders, but submitted a remediation plan a month later and had its case closed.

Jeff Eldridge: Well, Nine Mile and Big Ugly still doesn’t have water.

When I was in [the Legislature] before, I got water to the head of Big Ugly but as far as it’s gotten since then. I had a couple water projects on the table to bring the water down from Big Ugly but all that fell through, that was a while ago. Definitely want to do that.

I would also like to help the Lincoln Public Service District. They need infrastructure grants.

Our lines bust all the time. And that serves a lot of people. You know, I have to talk to the water plant guy in the other area, Lincoln County. I think maybe the Branchland area. I think it’s a newer water system. I’m not really sure how long they’ve been in business. So just need to communicate with them and try to get a dialogue going with them and try to get some grants written to get water, to get replaced water lines.

3. Where do you see Lincoln County in the next 20 years?

Britney Brogan: Hopefully, in a much better place.

I think we’re doing great with our education system. We’ve made a lot of progress there. We’re making a lot of progress with our youth sports, thanks to the newly developed Lincoln County Youth Association.

Personally, I’m trying to make things better in the animal welfare world, trying to get an animal shelter here.That will help folks, both with pets they’re no longer able to afford to keep and with this huge, massive stray problem that we have here.

I’m hoping we can work on our infrastructure in general, and provide people with the basics that you should have in modern technology. Access to internet services, access to clean water. Our roads — they’re not horrible, but they’re not great. I would like to see that improved. I think there’s other things I’d rather focus on first, and it would be the internet and water services. I think both of those are absolutely needed at this date and time.

Jeff Eldridge: Oh, Lord. Well, I definitely see the tourism thriving. I think that’s gonna be a big plus. You get that Hobet Project in and you get the elk stocked over there. Get our rivers cleaned up a little bit better.

There’s $20 million laying on the table right now. It got approved a while back to take the dredging, so to speak, down from the Forks of the Coal to Tornado. I’ve been a very big advocate for that, been in many meetings to help push that along. I’d like to get that pushed on and get the ball rolling on that.

And what that does is, it dredges the river itself which brings new species of fish into the area. It’s my understanding too, with this with this funding, we want to take out — there’s something across the river down there in Tornado, a pipe or whatever, but it kind of prohibits fish from coming upstream. We’ll take that out. But that’s in that project too, of putting that rock formation in and that log formation in. It’s self-dredging slowly on the river.

[The] Hatfield-McCoy [ATV trail], I’ve always been a big strong advocate for that. I’ve pushed it from the get go from 2005 on. Definitely want to continue. I think that’s the future.

God gave us these mountains. We are probably one of the best four-wheeling areas east of the Mississippi in my opinion.

You know, our people sell. Everybody I’ve talked to comes from other states, they say the people here are so friendly compared to where they’re from. So I think it’s positive.

In 20 years, hopefully with getting infrastructure and tourism up, we’ll get some companies to want to move to Lincoln County.

Context: The work on the Coal River has been ongoing for a number of years. The state, in coordination with non-profit organizations, has been working to restore the river to make it more habitable for fish and to keep the banks from slipping in . The Hatfield-McCoy Trail – an off road trail system covering 900 miles in southern and western West Virginia – has a trail head in eastern Lincoln County.

4. Some young people from Lincoln County have decided to come home and try to make a go of it in the county. What would you do as a state lawmaker to encourage more young people to come back and live in the community where they grew up?

Britney Brogan: I think being one of those people myself: I went to Marshall for school, and I stayed in Huntington for a very long time. But I missed it. It’s where I grew up. I was born and raised here.

So, I think helping those young people connect to their roots, and showing them that there can be a promise here in Lincoln County. But again, we’ve got to work on creating jobs. I think encouraging these young people to start their own businesses.

I know our Lincoln Economic Development Authority, they just got approved for a large amount of [federal American Rescue Plan] funding to create an economic development center to focus on encouraging businesses to come to Lincoln County, and also to help people to start their own businesses in Lincoln County.

I think as a county in general, if that does occur, encouraging everyone to support those businesses is a huge deal. We’ve seen some people try to start small businesses here. And ultimately, they don’t work out well, because they don’t have the community support. So I think encouraging the community support of those that do start with small businesses would really bode well for our county.

Jeff Eldridge: Well, when I was in, I did introduce legislation to give them [retirees] a tax break, a one-time tax break, if they moved back. I believe it was for anybody who retired, moved back to Lincoln County, it was tax free on income. That was an incentive. So something along that line would be an incentive we could do, if that’s even possible. That would be for the courts to decide that one.

It didn’t get any legs at the time, but at the time, too, they were talking about doing away with the income tax total. I’m in support of that, too.

Context: In 2023, the West Virginia Legislature passed a 21% cut to state income taxes. Benchmarks were built into the cut to eventually reduce the tax to zero.

5. Is there anything else you would like to add to get out there to the voters?

Britney Brogan: Yeah, I mean, I’m registered as a Democrat. But I’ve been independent my entire life. I switched to the Democratic platform because someone was already running on the Republican platform. And unfortunately, independents don’t get elected, you don’t have the resources that major parties do. So even though I am registered as a Democrat, I’m very moderate with my political views. I always vote very moderately in the middle. I think a lot of people see Democrats as being raging liberals. And I’m not.

I decided to run to protect the health and welfare of our youth. I’m a school nurse in the county and the attack on our vaccination requirements for school children scared me so much that I decided to run for office. It’s incredibly important that we uphold our vaccine requirements, our mandates for schoolchildren in this state. The Legislature actually passed the bill to remove the requirements. Thankfully, the governor decided to veto that bill. So we’re safe for now. But next year will be an entirely different ballgame. So I wanted, hopefully, get into office to have more people in there with a medical background. I totally understand the importance of our children being vaccinated.

MSS: In what ways are you moderate?

Well, gun control is a big one. I think a lot of people think Democrats want to take everyone’s guns away. I definitely don’t agree with that at all. I don’t think that guns are the problem. I think we have a huge mental health crisis in this country. I think most of our gun violence and our issues surrounding guns are based on mental health problems. I don’t think a gun ban or any kind of gun legislation is really gonna change it. So I think we need to look at that from a more moderate standpoint.

What’s the root cause of all of these problems? I truly feel it’s a mental health crisis and the lack of available mental health care. In Lincoln County, we don’t have access to mental health here. You have to leave the county to get any kind of good mental health care.

Jeff Eldridge: I would like for everybody to get along and work together instead of fighting and bad mouthing. You know, I didn’t badmouth anybody in the election. But my name was out there. People were just rude. I’d like for people to start putting Lincoln County first and get past politics, all that crap.

It’s just negative, negative, negative, negative. I’m not a negative person, I don’t like being around negativity. I’m upbeat and I’m positive. I ran to make a difference for Lincoln County and to help Lincoln County. And that’s what I’m going to do. I can ignore the negativity, but it’s just rude. We’re gonna get past that.

MSS: So if you’d come back down to Charleston, you’d want to see both sides work together?

Oh, most definitely. I don’t see that there’s much other side in Charleston. There’s only about eight or nine Democrat, Independent people in Charleston.

I’m talking about Lincoln County. People, our people getting along and supporting the county. Put Lincoln County first. This is the first time ever that I’ve been in politics that I had to work in one county. I was always voted in to represent four counties. The whole time, I was over there in two different decades. It was always four counties.

This one time, I get to work on Lincoln County. That’s what we need. We need to — I don’t want to say be more like Jesus — but we need to love our neighbors instead of talking about them or putting them down. Time for growth, I think. I think it’s a good time for Lincoln County. What we’re doing 20 years from now, what we start doing now, we start getting along and building Lincoln County instead of tearing it apart.

Q&A: Lincoln County House candidates respond to resident concerns about infrastructure, jobs and bringing young people back to the area appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.