Appalachian Regional Development Act Amendments Of 2006
APPALACHIAN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACT AMENDMENTS OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - September 20, 2006)
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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the chairman for not only his interest in this legislation, but his willingness to come to my State and his support.
I rise in support of this legislation to reauthorize the Appalachian Regional Commission through 2011. My State of West Virginia is the only State fully within the boundaries of the ARC, and I am proud of the work that the Commission has accomplished in our State.
Since the last reauthorization, three counties in my congressional district, and I have 18 counties, three of those counties, Lewis, Upshur and Randolph, have been removed from the list of economically distressed counties. That is good news. Putnam County, another one of my counties, has jumped to the competitive category.
I am pleased that this legislation codifies ARC's at-risk designation to protect counties like Lewis and Upshur that have fragile economies and could be in danger of falling back into the distressed category. This bill will permit the ARC to fund up to 70 percent of the cost of projects in designated at-risk counties.
The chairman of the subcommittee Mr. Shuster, the ARC Federal cochair Anne Pope, and I held a listening session earlier this month in Randolph County to hear some of the ways that the ARC has helped spur growth. We heard from several local elected officials, and we heard from really a variety of different entities in the county on how the ARC has helped spur development in Randolph County.
The director of the West Virginia Wood Technology Center spoke to us about an ARC grant that helped workers learn the skills they need to work in the timber industry, in the forest industry. We heard from a teacher who received an entrepreneurship award to train high school students and actually won an award for that and traveled to Washington with her student to accept that award, and has since spurred that student on to graduating from college and becoming an accountant.
We heard from the chairman of a rural public service district who is expanding sewer service with ARC funds. And we heard from the director of a regional planning council that assisted a seven-county region in obtaining grant funds for economic development.
Job training, economic development, education benefits, housing and helping to build a community infrastructure are just some of the achievements of the ARC in this one county over the last several years.
Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the day when every West Virginia county and every Appalachian county is strong enough economically that the ARC is unnecessary. Until then, since 1965 until in 2011, until then, however, ARC is a tremendous asset in improving communities across the region.
I know that there is some disagreement regarding this legislation, we heard about that, but the ARC and the programs it supports has broad bipartisan support across Appalachia. The Senate passed this bill by unanimous consent, and I hope my colleagues will pass the bill so that it can be signed into law.
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