(Photo Illustration – MetroCreativeConnection – Editor’s Notes by Christina Myer)
I had an opportunity this week to visit a town in another part of the state for a meeting, and while I was there, noticed a juxtaposition that is common all over the state — even here — but tends to be more noticeable when you observe it outside your own community.
Alongside municipal infrastructure improvements and cool new restaurants that have the whiff of economic development and progress were abandoned buildings, overgrowth and a few wanderers who, if they were not actually homeless, certainly had the appearance of struggling with challenges that are not indicators of economic prosperity and progress.
One of the attendees at the meeting asked a question about what a former steel mill town he had once visited was like now. The answer was that all anyone seems to be able to talk about is data centers, which offer VERY few jobs, and that otherwise, the town was in the same state it had been in since the mills shut down.
Then I stumbled upon a recent report by the Appalachian Regional Commission — you know, the one that for 63 years has pretended it was trying to lift our region’s 423 counties out of this mess rather than maintain itself — titled “Classifying Economic Distress in Appalachian Counties.”
Authors of the report started with this line: “ARC’s vision is to ensure that Appalachia — a region of great opportunity — will achieve socioeconomic parity with the nation.”
Two paragraphs later: “In fiscal year 2027, 76 counties are designated as distressed, 85 as at-risk, 240 as transitional, 18 as competitive, and 4 have reached attainment.”
Four. In 63 years.
Residents of West Virginia and Appalachian Ohio will not be at all surprised to learn the largest concentration of distressed and at-risk counties are here and in eastern Kentucky. There are 13 distressed counties in West Virginia, three in Ohio, and plenty of distressed census tracts within counties that as a whole have not been deemed distressed.
A report by West Virginia Public Broadcasting notes those counties ranked as “distressed” fall among the worst 10% of the nation’s counties.
The ARC report cheekily brags that the number of distressed counties is the second-lowest in the 21 years the organization has used this ranking system. You have to squint at the accompanying chart to note that the lowest was last year, at 75. In other words, one county’s situation got worse.
And, in case you’re wondering, in 2007, when the rankings were first reported this way, there were 78 distressed counties in Appalachia.
The Appalachian Regional Commission says its investment priorities focus on building businesses, workforce ecosystems, community infrastructure, regional culture and tourism, and leaders and local capacity. It churns out a lot of research reports that demonstrate the disconnect between the mission it says it has been working toward for more than six decades and the reality in the region it is supposed to serve.
The available reports are full of language like “Grantees described additional long-term impacts of their projects, such as increased awareness or enhanced reputation for their projects that extended their reach to new populations …”
In the ARC’s FY 2027 Congressional Justification, submitted in April by federal co-chair Gayle Manchin, it requested $120 million to fund programs, saying “ARC will make critical investments to address some of the pervasive challenges that have hindered regional development in Appalachia.”
The organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., has as many as 100 employees, with an average salary of approximately $125,000 per year. Its executive director makes nearly $210,000 per year. Human nature suggests those people aren’t interested in accomplishing a goal that makes their jobs unnecessary. And, in fact — though there have been brief successes — for generations, the ARC has not been held accountable for “investing” more than $6 billion, yet failing to meaningfully move the needle toward the goal President Lyndon Johnson expressed in Huntington all those years ago: “to bring unequalled prosperity to the Appalachian area and to all the people of this wonderful land.”
Other words from Johnson in 1964 could be uttered by a politician today: “The general economic progress of the nation has passed Appalachia by … But behind the description of the need of a region lies the desolation of a people. I have seen the despair and the hopelessness in the faces of these citizens. What exists in this area is a challenge to the ingenuity as well as the compassion of the Congress.”
Is there enough ingenuity and compassion in Congress now to force the Appalachian Regional Commission to start actually working toward fulfillment of its mission? I know it seems as though that’s not in the best interest of most of them, but for goodness sake, you’d think at least four of them would stand up.
Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com.
