I was surprised to learn in the Jan. 26 paper that the Maryland coal industry needs taxpayer subsidies to survive, according to state Sen. George Edwards and company (“State again trying to repeal coal tax credit”).

According to the article, Edwards estimates that losing the tax credit could cost the industry more than a thousand jobs — laying off virtually all the 1,200 people now directly employed by Maryland coal.

I thought taxpayer subsidies went either to fledgling industries for which no market yet exists, or to dying industries for which only a small, dwindling market remains. Neither is true of coal.

Despite Edwards’ gratuitous sneer at “bio-this, bio-that and bio-everything,” no alternate fuel, as he well knows, poses a threat to coal anytime soon. According to Allegheny Energy, that utility alone generates 95 percent of its power from coal, burning 19 million tons of it a year.

You would think our monthly Allegheny Power bills would be enough out-of-pocket taxpayer support for the coal industry — but no, Edwards expects us to pay part of the coal operators’ tax bill, too.

The current dollar value of the tax break, judging from the article, seems to be $4.5 million a year, but the article also says the Maryland coal industry already lost half its taxpayer subsidy, in 2009. I presume this means that as recently as 2008, taxpayers subsidized the Maryland coal industry to the tune of about $9 million a year.

Has this 50 percent cut in its tax break prompted the industry to shed 50 percent of its employees? Has it, in fact, cost the industry any employees? On these points the article is silent.

Other numbers missing from the article include the annual net profit of Maryland coal companies in the past five years; the total dollar value of the tax break the industry has received in the past five years; and what the total salaries and bonuses have been, during the same five years, for the five top executives at each Maryland coal company plus its lobbying arm, the Maryland Coal Association.

Any private industry that asks taxpayers for handouts should readily provide that information. Any industry that fails to provide that information should have its request denied, as a matter of policy.

I’m also surprised to learn, from this same article, that Edwards views the coal industry as some sort of noble bulwark against job losses — which makes me wonder about a couple of other numbers, namely how many of those current 1,200 employees, as a percentage, actually mine coal; and what the corresponding percentage of actual miner employees was 10 and 20 and 35 years ago.

Since the 1970s union unrest in the Appalachian coalfields, the coal companies, far from preserving jobs, have done all they can to shed traditional mining jobs right and left in order to pursue surface mining and mountaintop removal, a recipe for ever-lower employment and ever-worsening environmental and cultural devastation across the region.

But according to Edwards — who has received $32,940 in campaign donations from energy and natural-resources interests since 2002, according to Project Vote Smart — the coal industry is practically a taxpayer-subsidized job-creation program, like Roosevelt’s WPA. Coal isn’t all that’s being shoveled here.

Andy Duncan

Frostburg