Steve Boyce, Madison County
Secretary/Treasurer

My name is Steve Boyce.  My wife Patty and I came to Berea in 1969 and have been here ever since.  We’ve raised three children here. Patty and I both grew up in Indiana and came to Berea because of an opening in the Math Department at Berea College.  It was my first job right out of graduate school.  I wanted to join the faculty at a small college.  When I was finishing at the University of Wisconsin and looking for job openings, Berea College seemed very appealing. We thought it was a good place to start.  At first, we didn’t know how we would like living in a small town or how we’d like living in Kentucky.  But, after all these years we’re still here.  I retired three years ago.  Before retirement I felt like I didn’t have time to do anything except what was in front of me at the college, so it’s only been in the last three years that we’ve opened ourselves more to what’s going on in this area and in Kentucky. 


In some ways, coming to Berea College was how I became involved in social, economic and environmental justice. I wasn’t using those words at the time, but I can recognize that that was a good bit of the attraction to come to the college.  Berea College tries to provide a good quality educational opportunity, and it aims at only admitting students who can demonstrate the need for a full tuition scholarship. The college focuses on the Appalachian region in the sense that 70 % to 80% of the students are drawn from Appalachian counties.  Historically, it was founded out of abolitionist fervor and the belief in the importance of having blacks and whites and men and women educated together. There was a lot of racial and egalitarian idealism in the founding and a lot of that lives on today. A core commitment to anti-racist and egalitarian philosophy, and belief in the power of education is very strong in the people join the faculty and staff.  So in many ways I feel like that’s why we wound up staying at Berea College for all those years.  It seemed like work worth trying to do with very interesting students and co-workers who brought much genuine commitment to the effort. 


I became aware of KFTC first by learning a little bit about their role in the Broad Form Deed Campaign. Then, it was in the early to mid-90s that Teri Blanton had a house party in Berea.  I didn’t really know her at the time, but Loyal Jones was involved and I knew Loyal very well and so did Patty.  He invited us to come, and that was my first concrete exposure to KFTC. I bought a t-shirt, learned some things about the organization, and we joined.  We were really members from a distance, because we allowed ourselves to think that we didn’t have time for any active involvement.  But we kept up with what was going on through bts and paid our yearly dues. That was the extent of my KFTC involvement until the summer of 2003 when I retired. 

Right after retirement, just as I was thinking about how to use some of the newly available time, Bill Stolte and I decided to drive down to Faubush for the Saturday portion of the 2003 KFTC annual meeting. I was really taken with what I saw there.  I remember I was very favorably impressed with the quality of the leadership that seemed to be coming from staff, regular members and allies – like Democracy Resource Center. This was when KFTC tax reform strategy was being rolled out, and it was when I first became aware of many people who are at the heart of what Lisa Abbott likes to call “the tribe” that “I love being part of.”   I was also impressed with the real diversity of the people who were at the meeting and the positive spirit and determination to change the world that they seemed to bring the discussions.  That was what lit the fire for me. 

Much of my KFTC work has centered around tax reform issues.  I knew almost nothing about tax structures and state government.  But the learning was really interesting, and KFTC and KEJA did a great job of supporting my learning and that of others who were becoming involved in lobbying for tax reform aimed primarily at issues of fairness and adequacy.  They had good substantive materials and resources behind them. KFTC staff and experienced members were very effective in helping people who didn’t know anything about state government to become involved in lobbying as part of a cohesive effort to influence outcomes and, on occasion, to win issues. 

In 2004, I became involved with the Net Metering Bill. Having some part in helping to shepherd that bill into law was extremely satisfying.

Net metering is based on the idea that if you’re generating more energy than you’re using – solar panels on a home, for example - then the excess electricity should be free to move back to the grid for others to use.  So it enables electricity to flow into as well as out of the grid.  The standard electric meter will run both ways, forwards or backwards.  It runs forwards when you’re pulling electricity off the grid and backwards when you’re putting it back.  It just shows the net, so you just pay for the electricity that you use. Essentially, it pays you back for the energy you are producing. 

Initially there was a bill that was pre-filed and Jim Wayne and Lonnie Napier were the co-sponsors.  In its original form, Lujuana Wilcher took an interest in it. She basically got some of her staff members to meet with the utility lobbyists and find out from them what their issues were.  Then her staff met with me, Joshua Bills, another KFTC member who works with Appalachia-Science in The Public Interest (ASPI), Lisa Abbot and Jim Wayne to tell us know the bill needed to be amended to have any hope of passing in the face of opposition from the utility and coal lobbies.  Agreements were made that the bill would be amended and then it was introduced in both the house and the senate.  It passed both committees.  It went to the house, passed unanimously.  It went to the senate, passed unanimously. 

And I thought that that was it. I thought it would just go to the Governor’s desk for signing.  But it turns out that either the senate has to hear and pass the House bill or the house has to hear and pass the Senate bill.  That’s one of the nuances that I didn’t know about.  When bills are introduced in parallel in both the House and the Senate, one or the other has to be recognized and approved by the other chamber.  So it got down to the last day. Jim Wayne and Lisa had worked much of the day without success trying to find a suitable House bill to which the Senate version could be attached. Just when it seemed that all was lost, Ed Worley encountered Lisa in the hallway and – after asking how she was – heard her tale of woe.  His response was to walk over to the House chambers where they were in session on that last afternoon, get the session to adjourn long enough for the necessary committee to hear and pass the Senate version of the bill and then bring it back to the House floor for reading and passage – all in about a half an hour. It was just amazing!   Kentucky would not have a net metering law – despite the fact that identical House and Senate versions had passed unanimously in their respective chambers - had Ed Worley not happened upon Lisa in the hall, heard her story, and then been willing to use his influence to make common sense prevail.


As far as how my focus moved from a local to a statewide level, with me in a way it’s been just the other way around.  I was drawn in by my interest in the statewide issues.  I started with a focus on state tax issues and then, when the Madison County chapter was first formed, one of our members was the Mayor of Berea. He at one point asked us, almost apologetically, if we could get interested in the city tax structure.  He wondered if there weren’t some of the same issues and offered to provide some materials to help us learn more about municipal taxes and Berea’s situation in particular.  So there, the state level involvement led directly to the local.  Recently, there’s been another example.  I had never been involved with formal lobbying before KFTC.  One of the local issues here has involved trying to promote making the Berea area friendlier to bicycling and walking as practical and safe alternative modes of transportation.  So, we asked ourselves, “Why not sit down and talk face-to-face with individual City Council members about the resolution wanted them to pass?” That lobbying effort was not only successful in that the resolution was understood and passed, but I also think we developed some good relationships with City Council members that we can build on down the road.  So that local lobbying effort grew directly out of the experience that some of us had had at the state level. 

I think that my favorite thing about KFTC is the extent to which the idealism of the vision statement and the goals really lives within the group. You see this whenever KFTC people are gathered from around the state whether it’s lobbying, or at the annual meeting or at a workshop in Hazard.  You just see a lot of diversity, commitment to building community and winning issues through involvement in democratic process.  What I see coming alive in those situations is the KFTC belief that through ordinary people getting together and talking about their challenges and opportunities, a real strength can develop.  You’d hardly ever find another organization that is so genuinely membership led. One of the great strengths of our KFTC staff is the way they enable members to lead by effectively framing issues and alternatives and providing the kind of background information that’s necessary for thoughtful decision making. And it’s based on the belief that wisdom resides in ordinary people and is likely to emerge when they work together.


One thing that excites me as a new member of the Executive Committee and as a KFTC member in general is the chance to continue to work towards Option A. I’d really like to see us be successful at building our capacity.  That’s what Option A is about, building our capacity so that we can address our current and future chapter and statewide issue campaigns more and more effectively. At the state level, there’s a lot of constructive potential and substance in the Canary Project, the work of the Economic Justice Committee, and the High Roads Initiative.  I would like to see the effective addressing of those campaigns through the increased capacity we’ll have by reaching toward Option A and beyond. 

One thing I’ve appreciated is the real way in which KFTC’s history is recognized and respected.  I like it that we honor the people who got this all started and learn about the issues they were engaging and the methods they used.  That was a very pleasing part of the annual meeting. In some strange way this reminds me of something interesting about human beings:  over 90% of the molecules that make up any one of our bodies gets replaced by new molecules over a year’s time.  This means that at the molecular level you are at least 90% different than you were a year ago.  And that raises some interesting questions about personal identity.  What is it that provides some continuity of spirit and vision – that makes us who we are - if the great majority of our most basic body parts are constantly being replaced?  That suggests a similar question about the identity – the spirit and vision – of organizations like KFTC.  We constantly have new members coming in and our membership has changed over the years, just like the molecules in our bodies. For the same reason you’d want to recognize yourself a year from now, even though at the molecular level you’re almost totally different, it’s important to stay in touch with the history of KFTC’s spirit and vision and how it’s evolving.  Because KFTC has such a rich history, I hope that what we become will be deliberately and thoughtfully built on who we’ve been as an organization. I think KFTC would be weaker if didn’t maintain a clear and deliberate connection with the past.  There’s a core there, a spirit that we need to stay in touch with and be guided by.