Jim Justice, a coal billionaire running for West Virginia governor, owed millions in back taxes to some of Appalachia's most impoverished counties, including one in Kentucky which has been struggling to pay the debt on a new rec center and has turned the lights off in its parks and reduced hot meals for senior citizens, according to tax records and government officials.

Many of these counties have been devastated by the collapse of the coal industry over the past few years, and their financial struggles are not all Justice's fault. But county officials said that things would be a lot easier if he paid up.

Democrat Zach Weinberg, the top elected official in Kentucky's Knott County, said as he thumbed through a folder of Justice's debts, "It's just absurd that a billionaire wouldn't pay his taxes," 

Justice, who has been leading in the polls, made no apologies for the debt owed by some of his coal companies, saying that he has been doing everything he can to keep his businesses running and workers employed while other companies go under.

One of the biggest chunks of money owed is in Knott County, where Justice has unpaid taxes of $2.3 million dating to tax year 2014. That's a substantial hole, given the county government's $10 million budget and its separate $23 million school budget.

Justice has other unpaid tax bills scattered across the hills and hollows of eastern Kentucky: $1.2 million in Pike County, $500,000 in Floyd County, $228,300 in Magoffin County and $167,600 in Harlan County, according to county officials.

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By Prakriti Neogi