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Appalachian Regional Commission

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Overview:

ARC is an economic development partnership between the federal government and the governors of thirteen states that works with the 23 million people in the Appalachian community in an effort to positively impact their lives. Its specific goals include increasing job opportunities, per capita income, and community development programs; improving the region’s infrastructure to make it economically competitive; promoting strategies aimed at closing socioeconomic gaps through education and workforce training; and building the Appalachian Development Highway System to fully connect the region to the nation’s transportation grid.

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History:

In the 1950s one of every three Appalachians lived in poverty and per capita income in the region was 23 per cent lower than the U.S. average. In 1960 the Conference of Appalachian Governors was formed by the heads of states in the region and in 1961 they approached President John F. Kennedy to ask for federal assistance. In 1963 he formed a federal-state committee that became known as the President’s Appalachian Regional Commission (PARC) and directed it to draw up “a comprehensive program for the economic development” of the area. The result of the PARC’s efforts was outlined in an

April 1964 report

which President Lyndon B. Johnson used as the basis for legislation developed with the bipartisan support of Congress. It was submitted in 1964 and the

Appalachian Regional Development Act (ARDA)

became law in March 1965, establishing ARC as a sustained national regional development program, and including authorization for several new entities, including the Appalachian Development Highway System, health, nutrition, childcare, and low-income housing projects, and entrepreneurship and telecommunications and technology initiatives.

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What it Does:
The ARC, a federal-state partnership, is made up of a federal co-chair; the governors of the 13 Appalachian states, one of whom each year they select as the states’ co-chair; and grassroots participants, including people from local development districts and multi-county agencies with boards made up of elected officials, businessmen and women, and other local leaders.
 
Among their responsibilities:
  • Serve as a focal point and coordinating unit for Appalachian Programs, providing a forum for consideration of problems of the region, and proposed infrastructure solutions, as well as regional productivity and growth.
  • Continue addressing all possible avenues that may help in the effort to most quickly and expediently complete the 3,090-mile Appalachian Development Highway System. 
  • Coordinate the economic development activities of, and the use of economic development resources by federal agencies in the region.
  • Help generate a diversified competitive regional economy, by improving education and training and furthering entrepreneurial activities and the use of new technology.
  • Encourage local development districts and private investment in industrial, commercial, and recreational projects as well as the use of eco-industrial technologies and approaches, working to help determine the most socially and economically beneficial courses of action.
  • Conduct and sponsor investigations, research, and studies of local and private programs, and recommend modifications or additions that can increase their effectiveness.
  • Advocate planning so that housing, public services, and other community facilities will be provided in a way that enhances the beauty of the region and at the same time is compatible with conservation values.
  • Continually seek avenues to help the region expand access to health care services, recruit and train additional health care professionals, and decrease substance and domestic abuse.
  • Make recommendations to the President and to the state governors and local officials.
 
From the Web Site of the ARC:

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Where Does the Money Go:
Of the 13 states that are awarded grants from the ARC, Kentucky receives the most ($13.2 million).
 
 

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Suggested Reforms:

In their FY 2012 budget recommendations, Republicans proposed eliminating the ARC, noting that the agency’s removal would save the federal government $76 million. President Barack Obama retained the ARC in both his FY 2012 and FY 2013 budget proposals.

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Former Directors:

Anne Pope

Anne Breier Pope was nominated by President George W. Bush and began serving as the tenth federal co-chair on February 3, 2003. She is a 1983 graduate of Vanderbilt University with a BA in history, and she earned a JD from the Cumberland School of Law at Stanford in 1986. From 1987 to 1988 she clerked for U.S. District Judge James D. Todd in Jackson, Tennessee, and after that was an associate attorney with Webster, Chamberlain and Bean in Washington D.C. from 1988 to 1992. For three years Pope was president of the department store group Parks-Belk Company, and in 1995 was she named president of Proffitt's of the Tri-Cities, Inc., a division of Saks, where she remained for two years. In 1997 Pope became the Executive Director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment, and Music Commission, and in 1999 she began serving in the cabinet of Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist, as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.
 
Pope has contributed to the Bush-Cheney ticket, the Tennessee Republican Party, the Tennessee Senate campaigns of Republicans Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, William Frist, and Fred Thompson, and the Tennessee Congressional campaigns of Republicans William Jenkins and James Henry Quillen.
 
Haley Barbour
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was elected by his fellow Appalachian governors to be the 2008 States’ Co-Chair. Barbour attended the University of Mississippi in Oxford, but at the age of 21 left in the first semester of his senior year to work on Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign and he never took the few final units he needed to graduate. In 1970 he ran the Mississippi Census, and after that, despite his lack of an undergraduate degree, he was admitted to the School of Law at the University of Mississippi, receiving a JD in 1973. He worked as a lawyer with the firm of Henry, Barbour and DeCell, and as Executive Director of the Mississippi Republican Party. From 1985 to 1986 he served as Director of the White House Office of Political Affairs under Ronald Reagan. Barbour went on to co-found the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith, and Rogers, where he was Chairman and CEO, and which he left to become Chairman of the Republican National Committee, from 1993 to 1997. After that he returned to the lobbying firm and was there for six more years, in 2000 also chairing George W. Bush’s Presidential Campaign Advisory Committee. In November 2003 Barbour was elected Mississippi’s governor, and he was re-elected in November 2007. He is also a Presbyterian Deacon and Sunday-school teacher.
 
From his earliest days in politics, Barbour has drawn attention for the extent to which he often goes to get results, as well as his style in doing it, and the at times questionable relationships he has developed over the years, which were especially brought to light when he opened his lobbying firm. Barbour garnered additional criticism when it was revealed that several of his family members and fellow lobbyists had greatly benefited from Hurricane Katrina-related businesses. 
 
Since 1994, Barbour has contributed more than $150,000 to various Republican campaigns.
Haley’s Shadow Money (by Adam Lynch, Jackson Free Press)
Who Controls Haley Barbour? (yaller dog blog)
Impeach Haley Barbour (by Steve Clemons, Washington Note)
Mr. Washington goes to Mississippi (by Nicholas Dawidoff, New York Times)
Haley’s Choice: Native Son Comes Home (by Donna Ladd and Jesse Yancy, Jackson Free Press)
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Comments

N Kyle 1 year ago
christopher: going way back--the kids were pictured without shoes. as mentioned, three of the states are among our most prosperous. and, you don't know what other things i am doing re the state of our country. probably a hell of a lot more than you. and, i contribute money to medical research, colleges, programs for the hungry, pay college tuition for people in need, send money to friends and relatives in need--while i live frugally. since you don't have a clue about what i do...
Christopher M 1 year ago
n kyle your part about the "shoes" makes your comment ridiculously offensive. why don't you go after the mega-billions we give in foreign aid first? or why don't you go after the hundreds of billions in the welfare racket first? maybe you should get your butt in the car and do a tour of appalachia and see the plight of the crumbling infrastructure, deteriorating towns, and extreme environmental destruction due to mountaintop removal...you might change your mind. look..as a lib...
N Kyle 1 year ago
i trust this entity also gets taxpayer money from all of us--whether or not we live in appalachia. i notice that two or three states being helped by this commission are ranked among the top ten most prosperous. if all the kids in appalachia now have shoes--could we get rid of this commission? if the states which are members are funding it themselves--fine. i can't afford it.
NMRK 4 years ago
In the 1950's--Appalachia needed help. Is this still true? My guess is that we have many other parts of the country which would fall into the same set of statistics. I also believe we have many other agencies that overlap your efforts. Are we being redundant?

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Founded: 1965
Annual Budget: $64.8 million (FY 2013 Request); $470 million Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS)
Employees: 53 (FY 2013 Estimate)
Official Website: http://www.arc.gov/
Appalachian Regional Commission
Gohl, Earl
Co-Chairman

In nominating Earl F. Gohl, Jr. to serve as the next federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission, President Barack Obama played up Gohl’s years of experience in Pennsylvania state and local government. Left out of the November 16, 2009, announcement was the fact Gohl has also worked as a lobbyist for Puerto Rico in Washington, DC, and that his wife is a prominent leader of a union representing federal employees.

 
Gohl received his Bachelor of Arts from Rider College and his Master of Public Administration from Pennsylvania State University (1973).
 
According to the Obama administration, Gohl’s first job was spent working for the State Association of Boroughs in Pennsylvania, followed by serving as the executive assistant to the mayor of Harrisburg.
 
Gohl also served as deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Community Affairs. In this capacity he reportedly awarded and administered $100 million annually in housing and community development programs benefiting communities within the Appalachian region. 
 
Gohl served in Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey’s Washington, DC, office during 1993-1994, where he was listed as a budget analyst and director of the office. The sweeping Republican victory in November 1994 cost Gohl his job, and those of others working in the office, thanks to Republican Tom Ridge’s victory in the gubernatorial contest against Democrat Mark Singel.
 
In 1996, Gohl was appointed special assistant and then associate assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Labor.
 
By this decade Gohl had found work lobbying for Puerto Rico, serving as director of legislative affairs for the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington.
 
Gohl is married to Anna Burger, a labor leader with the Service Employees International Union. She too has been nominated by Obama, but as a member of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. The couple has one daughter.
 
Big Spender (by Sheryl Fred, OpenSecrets.org)
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Beshear, Steve
Co-Chair

A longtime Kentucky politician whose career began in the mid-1970s, Steven Lynn Beshear serves as co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) for 2011, along with his duties as governor of his state. Created in 1965, the ARC is an economic development partnership between the Federal government and the governors of the thirteen states in the Appalachian region. The president of the United States chooses one co-chair and the governors chose the other. Beshear represents the states.

 
A native of Dawson Springs, Kentucky, Beshear was born September 21, 1944, into a Baptist family of five children. His father, Russell Beshear, owned a furniture store. His father, uncle and grandfather were all lay ministers.
 
Bashear attended college at the University of Kentucky, where he was president of the student body and earned a bachelor’s degree in history (1966) and a law degree (1968).
 
From 1969 to 1975, Beshear served as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army Reserve.
 
He briefly practiced law in New York with the firm White & Case, before returning to Kentucky. Beshear joined the Lexington law firm of Harbison, Kessinger, Lisle and Bush, and then formed the law firm of Beshear, Meng and Green.
 
His political career began in the state legislature, serving in the House from 1974-1979. From there, he ran for state attorney general, an office he held from 1980 to 1983. As attorney general, Beshear decided the state’s public schools could not display the Ten Commandments following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Stone v. Graham. He also clashed with first lady Phyllis George Brown over charging the state’s citizens an admission fee to view the renovated governor’s mansion.
 
It was then onto lieutenant governor (1983-1987), from which he hoped to springboard to the governor’s seat. But he lost a five-way Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1987, resulting in Beshear returning to private law practice for the next 20 years.
 
In 1996, he attempted a return to elected office by challenging Republican U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell. He lost.
 
Eleven years later, however, another opportunity presented itself. With Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher appearing vulnerable for reelection, Beshear entered another competitive Democratic gubernatorial primary, but this time he won his party’s nomination. He went on to unseat Fletcher in the 2007 governor’s race, winning easily 59% to 41%.
 
Beshear has been a member of the Bluegrass Tomorrow board of directors, Commerce Lexington, Inc., God’s Pantry Food Bank, Kentucky Horse Park Foundation, Kentucky World Trade Center, Midway College Board of Trustees and the University of Kentucky College of Law Visiting Committee.
 
Beshear and his wife, Jane, whom he married in 1969, have two sons and three grandchildren.
 
Official Biography (Governor’s Office)
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