Apr 8, 2017 3 min read

The first half of the 1960s was the era of Camelot, of course. Those days were also marked by the Mercury space program, the civil rights movement, and the first stirrings of Beatlemania.

It’s also when America woke up to Appalachia.

Sure, it had always been there, but it was during the Kennedy and Johnson years that activists and policymakers started to wrestle with the steep poverty, isolation and underdevelopment of the region, which stretches from Mississippi to upstate New York and includes Washington and Greene counties. To help give Appalachia a boost, the Appalachian Regional Commission was founded in 1965, to help ignite economic development. For the last half-century, the commission has distributed federal dollars for projects that help provide employment, support businesses and fortify communities, from infrastructure projects to job-training and health care programs.

Clearly, poverty and dispossession have not been entirely banished from Appalachia, but progress had been made. There are 91 high-poverty counties in Appalachia today. But there were almost 300 in 1960. There are twice as many high school graduates in Appalachia now, and the infant mortality rate has decreased by two-thirds. The Appalachian Regional Commission doesn’t deserve all the credit for these developments, but it has certainly been an invaluable resource for state and local leaders.

The budget proposal unveiled by the Trump administration last month would completely zero out funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission. Whether this is merely an opening gambit and its funding will merely be reduced, or if this is an expression of disdain for any part of the federal bureaucracy that emerged in the Great Society, remains to be seen. But the fact that it is imperiled should make us all appreciate the good that the commission has done for this corner of the commonwealth and the country as a whole.

In a 15-month span from October 2015 to January, the Appalachian Regional Commission pumped more than $12 million into 59 projects in Pennsylvania. The commission reports that matching funds of $17 million resulted, and projects that a little more than $58 million in private investment will follow. Nearly 12,000 jobs will be retained or created because of this, the commission says.

In 2016, the Appalachian Regional Commission provided support for a community revitalization project in Bradford, an expansion of a women’s health telemedicine program, regional planning commissions and improvements to business and enterprise centers. In Fayette County, to cite an example close to home, the commission provided $65,000 for sewer design for the Joseph A. Hardy Connellsville Airport and Route 119 corridor.

Further afield, the Appalachian Regional Commission has helped fund a paramedic program in South Carolina, an effort to increase childhood literacy in Tennessee, the restoration of a train depot in Virginia and a farm food collaborative in Alabama.

It’s a common lament that government spending is wasteful, whether it’s in Washington, D.C., or in statehouses. While there are undoubtedly ways that government could be run more efficiently, or outmoded programs that could be axed, the Appalachian Regional Commission is not one of them. It’s been helping communities like ours for decades. It should continue to do so.