The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is a
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
federal–state partnership that works with the people of
Appalachia
Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, ...
to create opportunities for self-sustaining
economic
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with t ...
development and improved quality of life. Congress established ARC to bring the region into socioeconomic parity with the rest of the nation.
The Appalachian Region, as defined by Congress, includes all of
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...
and portions of 12 other states:
Alabama
(We dare defend our rights)
, anthem = " Alabama"
, image_map = Alabama in United States.svg
, seat = Montgomery
, LargestCity = Huntsville
, LargestCounty = Baldwin County
, LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham
, area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to t ...
,
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virgini ...
,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; ...
,
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mis ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
,
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia a ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...
,
South Carolina
)'' Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no)
, anthem = "Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind"
, Former = Province of South Carolina
, seat = Columbia
, LargestCity = Charleston
, LargestMetro = G ...
,
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...
, and
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...
. ARC serves 420 counties that encompass roughly , with a population of more than 25 million people.
The Appalachian Regional Commission has 14 members: the governors of the 13 Appalachian states and a federal co-chair, who is appointed by the president and confirmed by the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the e ...
. A professional staff carries out the work of the Commission.
The current federal co-chair is
Gayle Conelly Manchin. Manchin was appointed by President
Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate on April 29, 2021 by voice vote. The 2021 states' co-chair was Virginia Governor
Ralph Northam
Ralph (pronounced ; or ,) is a male given name of English, Scottish and Irish origin, derived from the Old English ''Rædwulf'' and Radulf, cognate with the Old Norse ''Raðulfr'' (''rað'' "counsel" and ''ulfr'' "wolf").
The most common forms ...
prior to the expiration of his term following the
2021 election.
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...
participation is provided through 73 local development districts, which are multi-county organizations with boards made up of elected officials, business people, and other local leaders. The ARC is a planning, research, advocacy, and funding organization. It does not have any governing power within the region.
Projects
All of ARC's activities must advance at least one of the five strategic investment goals articulated in its 2016–2020 strategic plan adopted in November 2015:
* creating economic opportunities,
* developing a ready workforce,
* investing in infrastructure, including the
Appalachian Development Highway System
The Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS) is a series of highway corridors in the Appalachia region of the eastern United States. The routes are designed as local and regional routes for improving economic development in the historica ...
,
* leveraging natural and cultural assets,
* and bolstering leadership and community capacity.
The bulk of ARC funds, which come from a federal appropriation, support grant making across a broad range of categories. All grants require performance measures. A regional research and evaluation program helps inform the agency's work. ARC emphasizes the leveraging of private-sector investments, relies on a broad network of public and private partnerships, and focuses on innovative, regional strategies to help communities help themselves. ARC targets its resources to the areas of greatest need, with at least half of its grants going to projects that benefit economically distressed areas and counties.
ARC's FY 2016 appropriation included $50 million in funding through the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) Initiative. This multi-agency initiative, launched in 2015, targets federal resources to help diversify economies in communities and regions that have been affected by job losses in coal mining, coal power plant operations, and coal-related supply chain industries due to the changing economics of America's energy production.
The Trump Administration's proposed budget for FY 2018 completely eliminates funding for the ARC. However, Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell
Addison Mitchell McConnell III (born February 20, 1942) is an American politician and retired attorney serving as the senior United States senator from Kentucky and the Senate minority leader since 2021. Currently in his seventh term, McConn ...
has assured constituents no funding would be cut from the ARC. In contrast, President Biden's first budget included $253,000,000 for the ARC. Biden's stimulus proposal budgeted an additional $5.3 Billion in direct aid to local governments in the Appalachian region. One of the ARC's Co-Chairs is also quoted as saying that Biden's proposed American Jobs Plan provides $1B in infrastructure repair to help distressed communitie
How it works
As mandated by Congress, ARC helps coordinate federal, state, and local initiatives to spur economic development in Appalachia.
Each year Congress appropriates funds, which ARC allocates among its member states. The Appalachian governors submit to ARC their state spending plans for the year, which include lists of projects they recommend for funding. The spending plans are reviewed and approved at a meeting of all the governors and the federal co-chair.
The next step is approval of individual projects by the ARC federal co-chair. After the states submit project applications to ARC, each project is reviewed by ARC program analysts. The process is completed when the federal co-chair reviews a project and formally approves it.
ARC is designed as a federal-state partnership that employs a flexible "bottom up" approach, enabling local communities to tailor support to their individual needs. ARC relies on local regional planning agencies (local development districts) to develop effective strategies for local economic development. ARC has made investments in such essentials of comprehensive economic development as a safe and efficient highway system; education, job-training, and health care programs; water and sewer systems; and entrepreneurial and capital market development.
Accomplishments
Since its creation, ARC has helped cut the number of high-poverty counties in Appalachia from 295 in 1960 to 91 today, reduce the infant mortality rate by two-thirds, and double the percentage of high school graduates. Over the past five years, ARC programs have helped create or retain over 101,000 jobs in Appalachia through projects that include entrepreneurship, education and training, health care, telecommunications, business development, and basic infrastructure. Grants during that period have leveraged almost $2.7 billion in private investments.
ARC commissioned a report on
diseases of despair, which found that deaths due to
drug overdose
A drug overdose (overdose or OD) is the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities much greater than are recommended. ,
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...
, and
alcoholic liver disease were higher than average, especially in the parts of Appalachia under the most economic stress.
From September 1967 to 2008, the Commission published a magazine ''Appalachia'' (ISSN 0003-6595), frequency: Bimonthly, Sept. 1967-fall 1986: Quarterly, summer 1987-summer/fall 1995; 3 no. a year,
; Annual r less
R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars'', or in Irel ...
2004-2008.
Origins
Beginning in about 1960, the Council of Appalachian Governors, a group of the ten governors of the Appalachian states of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, united to seek federal government assistance for the mountainous portions of their states, which lagged behind the rest of the United States in income, education, health care, and transportation. During the 1960 Presidential campaign, candidate John F. Kennedy met with the governors to hear their concerns and observed living conditions in West Virginia that convinced him of the need for federal assistance to address the region's problems.
Unrest in the coal industry with movements like the Roving Pickets illustrated the need for federal government intervention in Appalachia. Another catalyst that helped lead to the creation of the ARC was the 1962 book ''Night Comes to the Cumberlands
''Night Comes to the Cumberlands'' (1963) is a book by Harry Caudill that brought attention to poverty in Appalachia and is credited with making the Appalachian area a focus of the United States government's "war on poverty". In ''Poverty in th ...
: A Biography of a Depressed Area'' by Harry M. Caudill on the poverty and history of the Cumberland area of Appalachia, predominantly in Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virgini ...
. This book brought the situation in Appalachia to national attention.
In 1963 President Kennedy formed the President's Appalachian Regional Commission to assist in advancing legislation to bring federal dollars to Appalachia. This legislation, the Appalachian Redevelopment Act, was enacted by Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
in 1965, creating the ARC as a federal agency. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
on March 9, 1965.
The ARC's geographic range of coverage was defined broadly to cover as many economically underdeveloped areas as possible; as a result, it extends beyond the geographic area usually thought of as "Appalachia". For instance, parts of Mississippi were included in the commission because of similar problems with unemployment and poverty. More recently, the Youngstown, Ohio
Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the largest city and county seat of Mahoning County, Ohio, Mahoning County. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Youngstown had a city population of 60,068. It is a principal city of ...
region was declared part of Appalachia by the ARC due to the collapse of the steel industry in the region in the early 1980s and the continuing unemployment problems in the region since.
See also
* Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. The ...
* Delta Regional Authority
The Delta Regional Authority (DRA) is a Federal-State partnership whose mission it is to improve the quality of life for the residents of the Mississippi Delta. The Delta Regional Authority serves 252 counties and parishes in parts of eight state ...
* Denali Commission
* List of Appalachian Regional Commission counties
* List of micro-regional organizations
* Northern Border Regional Commission
* Southeast Crescent Regional Commission
The Southeast Crescent Regional Commission (SCRC) is one of seven federal regional commissions and authorities authorized by the United States Congress to address instances of major economic distress in certain defined socioeconomic regions.
Or ...
* Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...
* War on poverty
The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a nationa ...
Notes
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
*
Appalachian Regional Commission
in the Federal Register
The ''Federal Register'' (FR or sometimes Fed. Reg.) is the official journal of the federal government of the United States that contains government agency rules, proposed rules, and public notices. It is published every weekday, except on fed ...
Appalachian Regional Commission
on USAspending.gov
{{Authority control
Appalachia
United States federal boards, commissions, and committees
Geography of Appalachia
Economic development organizations in the United States
Rural community development
Rural development in the United States