[Ohio] Poverty-fighting commission survives budget cuts

from The Akron Beacon Journal

DAVID HAMMER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - As federal budgets tighten and spending for local projects comes under attack, one regional aid program has received consistent backing from Congress and the president.

The 13-state Appalachian Regional Commission, entering its fifth decade, got $65.5 million this year, the most of the three authorities set up by the federal government to help the nation's poorest regions.

President Bush's proposals for 2007 would slash Alaska's Denali region from $50 million to $3 million and halve the $12 million for the Delta Regional Authority in the lower Mississippi River. But he asks Congress to keep up its funding for infrastructure, tourism and economic development in the Appalachia region.

As Bush and Republicans in Congress try to cut non-defense spending, they have barely sacrificed the Appalachian aid. Congress increased aid to the commission to $71.2 million in Bush's first budget year, 2002, and it's still within $1 million of its funding during former President Clinton's last three budgets.

The region stretching from southern New York to northern Alabama struggles with poverty, job losses, access to education and isolation in a rugged, sparsely populated terrain.

Proponents say the Appalachian commission gets to keep its money because it has a longer, proven record of results. Since 1965, the region's poverty rate has been cut in half, infant mortality is down by two-thirds, more than 2,400 miles in new highways have been built, and sewer and water service has been extended to 800,000 households.

The commission uses a structure that gives local governments more freedom over federal dollars than they have in popular programs such as Community Development Block Grants and Title I education funds.

In Ohio, 12 of the 29 Appalachian counties were considered economically distressed in 1997. Today, four have that critical level of persistent poverty.

Ohio matches more than $4 million in commission funding each year, helping the commission double to 50 the number of projects it takes on each year - from $1,300 for brochures promoting Hickory Ridge businesses to $600,000 for an ethanol plant in Coshocton County.

The commission's traditional opponents are fiscal conservatives in the House who consider the aid to be the kind of "pork barrel" spending they would like to ban because they oppose big government and the use of federal money for local purposes.

Some of the strongest opposition has come from Ohio congressmen. In the 1990s, former Republican Rep. John Kasich was chairman of the House Budget Committee, and routinely opposed funding for the commission.

More recently, Rep. David Hobson has used his role as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to sponsor legislation cutting the commission's funding. Last year, his bill would have cut aid to the commission by nearly half, to $38.5 million.

In recent years, Hobson's proposals have passed the House, but the Senate, led by fellow Ohio Republican George Voinovich, restores the funding.

Hobson's spokeswoman, Sara Perkins, said he had nothing to add to his voting record on the subject.

State Sen. Joy Padgett, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor and former head of Gov. Bob Taft's Office of Appalachia, disputes that aid to the region is pork barrel funding.

The difference, she said, is the commission uses the money to get more money, from state matching funds and from Agriculture or Commerce department grants.

Last year, the $65.5 million federal budget drew $170 million in state and local government aid and $560 million in private investment in the 410-county region. Voinovich says his congressional colleagues can't argue with that.

"It's always going to be difficult, but if people understand what it does and the leveraging of dollars, it's an easy choice," he said.