Coming into 2025, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear thinks the commonwealth has plenty of momentum in business recruitment – and he says he’s focused on keeping it going.
He said as much during a speaking engagement in western Kentucky Monday, when he appeared at the Carson Center for a Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce’s Public Policy Luncheon.
“Right now, the rest of the country is looking to us. For the first time that I can remember, they’re looking up to us instead of looking down on us, and that feels pretty good to me,” said Beshear. “We are charging into 2025 with the greatest economic momentum I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”
The governor echoed many of the talking points laid out during his State of the Commonwealth address last week, proclaiming that “business in Kentucky is now global” after the state surpassed its all-time exports and tourism marks in 2023 amid a record-setting time for private investments in the commonwealth.
Beshear also predicts that 2024 will be another record-breaking year for economic development and tourism once final numbers are tabulated.
“Keeping this momentum going, I think, is as simple as … putting everything we have in common in front of anything that divides us,” he said. “This moment in time is too important and that we cannot fumble it. So much of what the next 40 or 50 years in Kentucky will look like is about making sure that we get this moment of great potential right.”
Beshear boasted of the more than $35 billion in private sector investments made during his time in the governor’s mansion, which he said is the the largest amount under any Kentucky governor. Several of those have been in western Kentucky, including major developments like the future $69 million Kitchen Food Co. production facility in Hopkinsville, a $16.2 million investment in a new facility to make bulk material handling equipment in Muhlenberg County and a $232 million investment in Owensboro for a facility to make Zyn nicotine pouches.
- RELATED: Kitchen Food Co. will invest $69M in Hopkinsville production facility that will employ 925 workers
“What we see is that western Kentucky is as hot for economic development as I can ever remember it,” Beshear said. “You’re seeing wins, and you’re going to see more wins.”
The governor expects one of those to be Global Laser Enrichment (GLE). The company hopes to build the world’s first commercial laser uranium enrichment facility in Paducah. It executed a land swap in November to acquire the site near the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, where a $1 billion facility could be built after necessary regulatory and environmental hurdles are cleared.
“You look at the promise of GLE and the number of jobs that it can create, and being big enough to have its own gravity, to bring its own supply chain,” the governor said.
GLE submitted an environmental report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission late last year. The company hopes to submit a Safety Analysis Report to the agency this summer.
If its testing and application processes are successful, GLE aims to be in a position to deploy its technology – which will be able to enrich depleted nuclear fuel for further enrichment or use in nuclear power plants – no later than 2030.
“GLE is exciting for Kentucky; first, because it brings a ton of high tech jobs that will create good careers for Kentuckians, but it also helps diversify our energy portfolio,” Beshear said after his remarks. “And regardless of how people feel about the politics of that, the businesses that move here want a more diverse energy portfolio. So to keep those jobs coming, we need the type of power and the type of industry that GLE would bring or would resurrect here in western Kentucky.”
Several times during his speech, Beshear spoke of putting partisan politics aside. He said Kentuckians should work together as a state to “sprint forward during this period of almost unlimited potential.”
“Right now, there is so much pessimism and division in our country that doesn’t help us at all, that doesn’t bring one job into our commonwealth,” he said. “Our goal should be to show everybody that we can get things done, that here, neighbors don’t yell at neighbors, even where we have disagreements, maybe even profound disagreements. We recognize the most important things to our families aren’t partisan at all, and I think that that starts with thinking about what we think about when we wake up in the morning.”
Beshear also returned to another theme from both his reelection campaign promises and from his recent address in calling for universal pre-K education for Kentucky children and raises for educators in the state.
“The single most important thing to the future of our workforce is to finally pass universal pre-K for all 4-year-olds in Kentucky,” he said. “It is more than time to make sure that our 4-year-olds are getting the same opportunities and advantages that 4-year-olds are getting all across our country.”
Towards the end of the program, Beshear handed out ceremonial checks for previously awarded funding to local government leaders along with Rep. Steven Rudy, the Paducah lawmaker who serves as majority floor leader in the GOP-controlled Kentucky State House of Representatives.
Those awards included:
- $50,000 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the City of Paducah to establish a Cyber Security Governance Program.
- $500,000 to the McCracken County Fiscal Court, on behalf of the Paducah-McCracken County Industrial Development Authority to extend the sewers at the Ohio River Triple Rail Site.
- $3.5 million for the City of Paducah’s continued riverfront redevelopment efforts in its downtown area, particularly to help build a new riverboat excursion pier and plaza.
This story is republished with the permission of WKMS. Read the original.
