Current Operations and Capital Improvements Appropriations Act of 2011
The Appropriations Act of 2011  was passed by the House on May 4, 2011. This bill presses for education-spending reductions, outsourcing of state jobs, and tobacco income/loss compensation. Public forest development will be under the supervision of specially-created private limited dividend corporations. In addition the House majority wants to significantly enhance development activities by removing regulatory impediments.

Federal Funding for Ghost Town in the Sky Redevelopment

According to FedSpending. Org, Ghost Town Partners LLC, received $16,750,000 in direct and guaranteed loans from the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Business and Industry (B&I) Guaranteed Loans Program for the period 2006-2007. These warranties persuaded Branch Banking & Trust to extend Ghost Town Partners, LLC loans in the amount of $9.5 million to acquire and improve the long-shuttered Ghost Town in the Sky Amusement Park business site.

In March 2009, Ghost Town Partners, LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to prevent creditors, namely BB&T from gaining control over the company’s assets. The Smoky Mountain News reported on August 24, 2010 that the debtor's reorganization effort is foundering. The promise of a $7 million payment to BB&T, on the part of Allen Harper one of the original Ghost Town investors, has not been fulfilled.

BB&T has indicated that it wants a court-ordered liquidation. Should this action occur, the company’s assets will be sold. If the monies received are less than the federally-backed loan amount, BB&T will collect an undisclosed sum from the USDA-sponsored Rural B&I Guaranteed Loan Program. The Smoky Mountain News queried the respective parties for information re the amount of the loan under federal guarantee but neither the guarantor nor the creditor would answer this question.

Western North Carolina: I-40 Pigeon River Gorge Rockslides— July 1997 /October 2009 —NCGS & Asheville Citizen-Times

Tragedy always stirs the media and occasionally awakens dozing regulators.

The recent tragedy: a 300 foot-landslide that flattened a three story Maggie Valley, North Carolina residence on Wildcat Run Road. Bruce and Lorraine Donin, who were at home, survived. Rick Wooten, a senior geologist for the N.C. Geological Survey who investigated the site, said “It wasn’t so much that the house that was destroyed was located on a steep slope, it just got hit by a landslide that would have knocked any house over that wasn’t bombproof.”

Is the County Responsible for the Donins’ Property Loss?