Posted on 01/11/2003 11:20:13 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
FAYETTE CITY, Pa. - From where he sits, Mike Wokaly can't see that things have gotten any better over the last year in this tiny Appalachian town.
Few, if any, new jobs are coming into this corner of southwest Pennsylvania, where poverty and unemployment rates remain high above the national average. People sometimes pay for groceries with pocket change and $2 bills - whatever money they can scrounge up to feed their families.
But federal funding to Fayette City - as well as to hundreds of rural communities along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains - could be cut this year because Washington no longer classifies the local economy as distressed.
"This area has not had any growth in five years. None," said Wokaly, a 70-year-old retired teacher, truck driver and veteran who lives off his Social Security. "It's bad. Here, we have no economy. How they can cut subsidies to this valley is beyond me. Way beyond me."
Thirty-two counties in the Appalachian region - including Pennsylvania's two poorest, Fayette and Greene - will be upgraded from distressed status to transitional in the 2004 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The decision to do so was made last fall by the Appalachian Regional Commission, a joint federal-state panel based in Washington, which sets what even it describes as extremely tough economic standards for counties to meet in order to qualify as a top funding priority.
Only two Appalachian counties - Webster County, Miss., and Grundy County, Tenn. - will be downgraded from transitional to distressed status.
The ARC provides "glue money" - supplemental funding to help local communities meet state matching dollars for projects like job training, health clinics, building roads and water and sewer lines, and providing high-speed Internet access in rural areas.
By law, half of all ARC funding must go to distressed counties and areas. This year, ARC meted out $66 million to the 410 counties that make up the swath of Appalachia that stretches from New York to Mississippi. But at least half - $33 million - went directly to the 118 counties currently classified as distressed.
The remaining 292 counties had to fight it out for the leftovers, handed out by the discretion of the 14 members that sit on the ARC - the governors of the 13 Appalachian states and one representative of the federal government.
ARC spokesman Duane DeBruyne said the upgrading of the 32 counties to come off the distressed list reflects a bright shift, even if slight, in their economic forecasts.
"This is good news for the region," DeBruyne said. "The job clearly is not done; these counties are clearly still significantly distressed. There are still challenges. But we are making progress."
But local economic officials in Appalachia were shocked to hear their counties were no longer considered distressed - or eligible for the exclusive funding.
In Cherokee County, N.C., two bluejeans companies and a furniture factory shuttered their plants within the last several years, eliminating 2,000 jobs just as the 2001 recession hit. A third of those jobs have since been regained, said Cherokee County economic development director Bill Forsyth, but mostly in retail employment that offer neither health benefits nor enough pay to support a family.
The county previously has put ARC funding into its community centers, Forsyth said.
"We are among the most distressed counties in North Carolina, as far as the state's concerned," Forsyth said. "Things have definitely gotten worse. Our situation started going downhill in 1999 but has continued to slide."
To qualify as distressed, counties must exceed national poverty and unemployment rates by 150 percent, and fall short of the national per capita income by 66 percent or less.
Fayette County, Pa., for example, met two of the three prongs for 2004.
Its estimated unemployment rate is projected at 6.7 percent, or 157.2 percent of the national average. The national unemployment rate is 4.3 percent. Meanwhile, the county's per capita income is $15,919 - 62 percent of the national $25,676 average.
But Fayette County's poverty rate failed, if barely, to meet the required threshold. Its poverty rate is projected at 18 percent for 2004 - or 145.5 percent of the national average. The national poverty rate is estimated at 12.4 percent.
Tim Marema, programs director for the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Ky., questions whether the numbers reflect - or dictate - the accurate story of Appalachia's economy.
"It's very true that counties can move off distressed rolls due to factors that are not about improvement, but actually about decline," Marema said. "Per capita income can go up when people finally get up and leave. People can get off unemployment when what they're really doing is concluding that there's no chance of getting work, and giving up."
Few doubt that the face of Appalachia as a whole has improved since the ARC was created in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who declared his War on Poverty from the porch of a Kentucky shanty. Seven-eighths of Pennsylvania - the entire state except Philadelphia and its most upscale suburbs - was then designated as Appalachia by the federal government. Today, Fayette and Greene counties are the last two considered to be severely distressed.
Greene County officials hope their economic upgrade will convince businesses that it is safe to relocate there - even as they worry about losing the earmarked aid. "Certainly things are starting to happen. It's just a long process," said county Commissioner Dave Coder. "In certain ways, it's going to make it a little more difficult to get some of these loans, and participate in some of these programs. We're just going to have to work harder."
At least one Greene County coal mine recently shut down, stranding 350 employees, and two others are teetering on the brink of closing. An Ames department store, a Shop&Save grocery and a Dollar Mart also have gone out of business, laying off close to 100 people, said Ann Dugan, executive director of the Institute of Entrepreneurial Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh, who has been trying to lure new employers to Greene County.
"Greene County has a lot of challenges," Dugan said. "I don't see where there has been a lot of diversification in the economy to absorb the jobs that will be lost.
"Losing the distressed (status) is not a good thing," Dugan said.
ON THE NET
Appalachian Regional Commission: http://www.arc.gov/
No jobs where you are? MOVE.
One wonders how we got along without them in the years before our helpful government opened the floodgates and chose to avert it's eyes to this invasion.
So, with all this "help", it is a wonder these people in this article need help themselves! Why there's got to be plenty of money and jobs out there. Just ask your local hordes of illegal aliens!
Looks like Greene and Fayette counties, like their neighbors in the Northern Panhandle of W.Va., have reacted much too slowly to changes in their economic base. When coal mining, steelmaking or other such industries began their decline several years ago, county officials and their constituents should have started to think of alternatives. Instead, they sat around watching the economy shrink, and then stuck their hands out to the federal government (read, taxpayers) for help. Unfortunately, they got some of the handouts they demanded, even though the money did little actual good. Now that the gravy train has reached the end of the track (pardon my metaphors), they're whining about the bad situations they're in, ignoring the fact that they've done little to help themselves. Welfare money only enslaves and makes dependent its recipients.
And your suggested alternatives are...???
High-tech like Silicon Valley???
Casino gambling and tourism like Las Vegas???
The problem is that the Rove/Bush Administration's globalization policies encourage offshore (not domestic) economic development. This region is being forced into dependencey no matter what they do.
Those illegal immigrants are cleaning office buildings in large cities and mowing lawns in posh suburbs. If these people had any ambition, they'd go to where the jobs are.
After all, this country was built by people who moved great distances in search of prosperity, and it was a lot harder than just hopping on a bus.
My farm (pulp & timber) is in Webster County, Miss and the area is blighted, clear cut (owned mostly by large pulp companies), just damn depressing to drive through. When my father grew up on the farm there was fourteen large family farms on the road from the main road and railroad to ours, today there is only my cousin's new house and two trailers in the area.
I hadn't been there in ten years (my cousin manages my land for me) and was shocked at the change, all the woods and fields, I grew up hunting in are gone, replaced by some desolate, forsaken, pulp pine operations that looked like they had been fought over instead of harvested.
I once planned to retire there, building a log cabin by the pond, but it is too damn depressing now.
You want them to move to China? Just where are all these jobs you guys are talking about?
Richard W.
The unemployment rate in this country is still about 6%. I remember days(Carter years) when no one thought it could ever get lower than that. So, there are jobs.
And I happen to live in an area where the movie theaters all advertise the jobs before the feature, the supermarkets have job kiosks installed, and the construction sites all have some kind of help wanted banner.
I'm sure almost all growing areas have the same. And it's not hard to find a list of growing cities.
Or, start a state lottery and use the proceeds to improve local two year tech schools, and promote these improvements to industries, as Georgia has done with the hope grant.
For a working class person to be able to increase their income and hireability, increased skills and knowledge are required. Skills such as electronics, Heating and Air, CNC manufacturing, modern auto repair, medical assistant and RN, wiring, etc. available at no cost to working class people is a benefit to them and helps to attract industry.
Yes, it is possible to make more money elsewhere. But it also COSTS a lot more money to live elsewhere.
City folk sneer at the stereotypical shanties and old mobile homes. But the fact is, that much of the housing available in the mountains could not be built anywhere close to major cities, with all of their zoning laws, etc. One can find some pretty inexpensive places to live in the mountains if they need to, and if they can swallow whatever pride they might have.
Food? An old fishing rod and a shotgun will still put a fair amount of meat on the table, and one can always raise a few chickens or maybe even a hog or two, thanks to no zoning. A garden plot will take care of much of the vegetables. You might even be able to forage a fair amount of nuts, berries, mushrooms, etc. in the woods if you really have plenty of time on your hands, know what you are doing and where to look, and are really that hard up. It is quite feasible for someone living in the backwoods parts of the mountains to make the amount spent on a single meal at a city McDonalds stretch to feed their whole family for several days. We won't even go into the tax-free production of distilled spirits. . .
City jobs pay more, true. But you also need more expensive clothes. A couple pairs of blue jeans, a couple flanel shirts, a couple of tee shirts, a pair of boots, and a jacket, and a lot of these folks are pretty well set for the year. And, of course, the womenfolk can always sew some dresses and stuff.
City jobs pay more, but you need transportation to get to them, you usually can't live anywhere close to where you work. Lots of "self-employed" folks in the mountains don't even need to go anywhere on a daily basis, just a couple of trips into the nearest town each week in an old beat-up pickup truck will do. And if you don't have a truck that's running, chances are your friend or cousin down the road does.
City jobs pay more, but to live in the city you need to heat and cool your home. Energy isn't cheap. However, the mountain folks can head into the woods with their pickup truck, an axe, and a chain saw, and set themselves up with all the energy they'll need to keep their homes warm in the winter. As for summer cooling, that's what porches are for!
It is true that there are not many jobs that pay better than minimum wage in the mountains, and even those jobs are few and far between. But almost nothing in the mountains can be stretched a whole lot farther than a full-time minimum wage job in any city.
So what's the solution?
Maybe it begins by changing our thinking. Is it REALLY a PROBLEM for folks to be living this way? Or is it that the "problem" of "Appalachian poverty" is really just a problem of urban elites not feeling comfortable seeing other folks live this way?
Now there are a few truly legitimate issues. Medical care is (or at least was) substandard in many Appalachian areas, and much neeeded care was too expensive for many folks. Since we seem to feel that everyone in this country should be able to get the same urban standard of medical care, the only way that this could happen for poor mountain folks is with some outside help. That doesn't mean that the government should give everyone in Appalachia free medical care, just that there are a few very targeted, and mostly low cost, interventions that could make a huge difference at least in narrowing the gap, if not closing it completely.
Ditto with education, and maybe with transportation and infrastructure.
Instead of LBJ's over-reaching and counter-productive "war" on the poor folks of a huge swath of America, all they ever really needed was a very modest helping hand with a very few things to make their lives a little better. That's all they ever really wanted, either, but nobody among the Washington elites apparently were ever much interested in bothering to listen to the folks that they were trying to "help."
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