BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

INEZ — The Martin County Fiscal Court has approved Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty’s appointment of James Ayers to the board of the Big Sandy Regional Industrial Development Authority, following the resignation of founding board member and chairman Robert “Mike” Duncan due to health reasons.

The Big Sandy Regional Industrial Development Authority, originally incorporated as the Honey Branch Industrial Development Authority on Sept. 22, 1997, oversees the development and marketing of regional industrial parks across the Big Sandy Area Development District. The authority manages the Eastern Kentucky Business Park, formerly known as Honey Branch Industrial Park, located in Debord, Martin County.

The park has hosted major employers such as Chesapeake Energy and Consolidated Pipe & Supply and serves as one of the region’s key industrial sites.

Duncan served on the authority for 28 years.

Ayers, who attended the Oct. 16 Fiscal Court meeting, shared a brief history of the authority and his longtime association with Duncan. He has been with Duncan “most of those 28 years,” having started working for him at Inez Deposit Bank in June 2001.

“I’ve witnessed a lot over the years working with him,” Ayers said. “I still talk to Mike pretty much every day. I want to talk just very quickly about some of what I’ve observed from him, what I always found fascinating about his time management skills and devotion to his community.”

Ayers recalled that Duncan began serving on the board while also managing major political campaigns.

“When he went on the board in 1997, he was beginning to manage a United States Senate campaign for Jim Bunning,” Ayers said. “Wendell Ford was retiring, and Bunning got Mike to manage his campaign. That took him all across the state, traveling. A couple of years later, George Bush wins the presidency and Mike goes to Washington for the next eight years. Even though he was doing all those things — traveling the country as Republican National Committee chairman and working on presidential campaigns — he was always dedicated to Martin County and this region. He wanted to improve the county.”

Ayers highlighted major projects Duncan helped make possible during his tenure.

“The prison, of course. That wasn’t there when he started in 1997,” Ayers said. “Chesapeake Energy and Consolidated Pipe. There are two buildings up there now that are being worked on. Countless grants. It would be really hard to put a dollar amount on what he has worked on getting. He would be the first to tell you that he is not 100% responsible for any of that. Economic development has always been—and remains today—an all-hands-on-deck team effort. We’re very fortunate that Mike was always willing to be on that team and lead those efforts.”

Lafferty echoed Ayers’s remarks on behalf of the fiscal court and the people of Martin County, thanking Duncan for his years of service.

Duncan is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law and the University of the Cumberlands. He served for decades as chairman and CEO of Inez Deposit Bank, one of the county’s cornerstone institutions.

In addition to the roles Ayers points out, Duncan has held leadership positions on numerous regional and national boards, including the Center for Rural Development in Somerset and the Tennessee Valley Authority. He is a former member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service and served as its chairman from 2018 to 2021. He was inducted into the University of Kentucky’s Martin School of Public Policy and Administration Public Service Hall of Fame in 2019.

Ayers will complete Duncan’s unexpired term through the end of 2025 and begin a four-year term Jan. 1.