A former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives will be in Ohio County on Friday afternoon.

Newt Gingrich will be part of a meeting of the West Liberty University Economics Club at 3:00 p.m. Friday.  The event will be held at the Capitol Theater in Downtown Wheeling.

Gingrich says the overall economy is not getting better yet.

"I think the stock market's getting better and, for normal Americans who worry about jobs, it's getting worse still," Gingrich said of the current state of the U.S. economy on Thursday's MetroNews Talkline.

Gingrich served as Speaker from 1995 to 1999.  Before he became Speaker of the House, Gingrich served as Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995.  He had represented Georgia's Sixth District since 1979.

Currently, Gingrich is Chairman of the Gingrich Group, a communications and consulting firm in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta.  He is also an analyst for the Fox News Channel.

His appearance in West Virginia comes at the same time the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are taking steps that could impact West Virginia's coal industry in a major way.

Gingrich says he has no doubt what the Obama Administration is trying to do to the coal industry.

"All of the biases of the left are to destroy the coal industry as rapidly as they can get away with it and all of their timidity is based on the fact that you have so many states that have an interest in coal," he says.

"What they will try to do is slowly and steadily strangle the industry with the Environmental Protection Agency having, sort of, the lead role."

The Gingrich event is free and open to the public.

The Government Policy Research Center at West Liberty University is sponsoring the event with the help of the Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia and BB&T.