The Tom Roten Show · Uncommon Media Group

Mason Co. Progress & Prosperity Summit

April 9, 2026·42 min·3 clips

An InScale executive reveals their data center will use less water for cooling than a small hospital.

Mason County is the focus. Roten treats the Mason County Economic Progress Summit as something worth sorting through, not just another announcement. Delegate Jim Butler lays out the upside, but the conversation quickly gets practical. If new revenue comes into the county, how carefully does it get spent? Butler says having extra revenue would be a new problem for Mason County, but it would still need discipline and no waste. Roten then turns to labor. Construction jobs show up before permanent jobs, so he asks whether West Virginians will get that work or end up watching from the side. Butler says local hiring makes sense because a local worker is cheaper to bring onto a job than someone traveling a long way. Nucor becomes Roten's example. Butler says local people have been hired where possible, while noting that a steel production facility also needs specialized trades. Roten pushes further. He mentions Spanish signage he saw coming up Route 2 and says it points to foreign workers being brought in for some Nucor construction. Butler acknowledges that. He also says union contractors have bid on jobs and that he is pretty sure some have gotten work. Then the wage numbers change the mood. Butler says the N-Scale facility jobs are being discussed around one hundred thousand dollars or more, compared with a Mason County average income around forty thousand dollars. If those jobs land locally, they could move the county's average salary in a real way. The interview stays grounded. It is about whether workers, revenue, contractors, and local people are actually in position to benefit from what may be coming.

As heard by us

A county-growth conversation that keeps asking who gets hired, paid, and trained.

Mason County's progress comes back to a basic question: who gets the work, who gets the paychecks, and how local people can actually share in the money that arrives.

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Why you'd press play

You want the county-growth talk without the ribbon-cutting fog.

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