Louis Gossett Jr., 1st Black man to win best supporting actor Oscar, dies at 87
NEWS

Rural Ohio worries about 'hardship' under Trump's budget, which would eliminate Appalachian Regional Commission

Deirdre Shesgreen, and Chrissie Thompson
Cincinnati
New pipelines to carry natural gas are being built in Monroe County. Many people in the area credit this influx of work to President Donald Trump's friendliness to fossil fuel industries. Still, Trump's budget would cut a small pot of money to develop Appalachian roads and water systems.

 

WOODSFIELD – Appalachian roads are horrible, Deanna Stewart says. "Have you driven through Woodsfield?"

It's bad enough to commute on bumpy, windy roads through the hilly countryside, some of them gravel. But much of the economic fortunes in struggling eastern Ohio depend on the oil and gas industry, whose heavy trucks must navigate the hilly countryside.

The federal government has provided millions to kickstart projects like new roads to spur development in Ohio, but that money is now in jeopardy. President Donald Trump's budget proposal would eliminate all funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission – a move that, if approved by Congress, would stop the flow of federal dollars to Ohio’s 32 Appalachian counties and similar communities across 12 other states.

The move surprised Ohio's Appalachian voters. Many consider themselves working-class Democrats, yet they helped hand Trump the election. In Ohio's 6th Congressional District, for instance, Trump beat 2012 candidate Mitt Romney's margin of victory here by 30 points – the biggest GOP pickup in the nation. Voters hope Trump will bring jobs to their struggling region.

Deanna Stewart, 55, manages and lives at Shadow Lake Campground outside Miltonsburg in Monroe County. Oil and gas workers who are building a pipeline stay there. Stewart credits the influx of workers to Donald Trump's friendliness to fossil fuel industries.

"To cut that out would be a hardship," Stewart, 55, said of the ARC money. Nevertheless, she supports Trump. Without the money, she still thinks Trump can find ways to lessen the unemployment in Monroe County: 11.8 percent in February, the highest in the state.

"He's a smart man," said Stewart, who manages a campground outside Miltonsburg that's filled with oil and gas workers' travel trailers.

"I'm sure he can figure it out."

The Appalachian Regional Commission is one of 62 agencies or programs targeted for elimination in Trump’s budget; many of those cuts would hit programs that are designed to provide assistance to people in the small, rural and often impoverished communities that helped send Trump to the White House.

Trump’s proposal is just the starting point in the upcoming budget debate. Congress could ditch his budget and write its own, so many of the cuts he’s proposing are unlikely to survive.

That's the hope of Matt Abbott, who has big plans for the weak and worn pavement at the entrance to Zanesville’s Airport Industrial Park, thanks to the ARC. To recruit new businesses to the park and keep the ones already there happy, the airport needs far more than a new patch of concrete, said Abbott, director of the Zanesville-Muskingum County Port Authority.

“It’s a full-depth reclamation, which is tearing up some old pavement, grinding it, and repaving an entrance in our oldest business park,” he said.

To pay for the project, the Port Authority has applied for a $150,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission. It's a small but critical move, Abbott said, to keep that economic engine humming.

Take the news with you. Download the Cincinnati.com app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

The Appalachian Regional Commission, a 52-year-old agency created as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, funds local initiatives aimed at spurring economic development across 420 counties – from southern New York to Mississippi. The ARC’s current budget – $146 million – is a minuscule slice of the White House’s proposed $1.064 trillion discretionary spending plan.

ARC money typically goes to “distressed” communities, with low per-capita incomes and high unemployment. In Ohio, that covers 17 percent of the state’s population, running from Ashtabula to Clermont counties.

Trump’s proposal to kill the ARC has drawn fire from many congressional Democrats and some Republicans. GOP Rep. Hal Rogers, who represents the impoverished coal-mining region of southeastern Kentucky, dismissed it as “draconian, careless and counterproductive.”

Ohio to Trump: Change something. Anything.

“You simply can’t eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission,” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, told Ohio reporters. “It’s meant too much to the people of Appalachia, an area that frankly has been overlooked by government in far too many ways for far too long. Taking away the ARC is the worst swipe at them I can imagine.”

Indeed, many voters in Appalachia found the move confusing, although none had heard about this portion of Trump's budget. (Few had heard about the program at all, for that matter.)

Overall, these voters believe Trump is working for them, such as when he started to undo Clean Power Plan regulations on coal-powered electricity plants.

Ohio to Trump: Change something. Anything.

"Budgets are budgets," said Denver Pinkerton, 40, a Woodsfield truck driver. He understands they involve hard decisions, with so many parts of government to fund. "You've got your pros and cons for everything," he said.

Then, he scratched his head. He drives hot water to fracking sites in the area, so workers can release oil and gas from shale rock. He knows how important good roads and water systems are. "Ah, man," he said. "Roads and things, some things you can't keep from doing. ... It's got to come from somewhere."

Larry Kelly, 68, of Graysville, voted for President Donald Trump in the election. He believes Trump's biggest accomplishment so far is getting Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court, but wonders why Trump would cut a small pot of money for Appalachian roads and water systems.

Larry Kelly, a retired informational technology specialist from Graysville, was unequivocal.

"Appalachia needs all the help it can get," he said.

“I think people are in shock” over Trump’s proposal, said Bret Allphin, development director of the Buckeye Hills-Hocking Valley Regional Development District, which helps local entities apply for ARC funding.

The ARC provided Ohio with over $4 million in 2016, money that local officials leveraged to get additional state and private money. Last year, local entities used ARC money to fund 50 projects worth $61.6 million, Allphin said.

Those 50 projects created or saved 2,531 jobs last year, Allphin estimates.

Allphin said many local voters supported Trump, in part because he promised major infrastructure spending that local residents saw as desperately needed.

“At best I would call it confusing,” he said of Trump’s campaign promises versus the budget proposal. “We have these programs that have decades of positive results in the most rural and the most challenging economies. It’s just perplexing.”

But Trump is focusing on Appalachia, voters told The Enquirer. He visited a high school gym in St. Clairsville, near the West Virginia border, during his campaign. His friendliness toward the oil and gas industry and his executive order on the Clean Power Plan have local families in mind, voters say – ARC cuts or no.

"I don't see where any governor or senator, or even president or vice president, has concentrated on areas like Morgan County or Monroe County," said Jeremie Clifford, 45, who lives in Morgan County and drives more than an hour to Monroe County to manage an auto parts store. Most politicians avoid places with high unemployment rates such as Appalachia, Clifford said. At least Trump cares.

In any case, the success of ARC funding in spurring economic development means it will be pretty hard for Congress to accept Trump’s proposal, Abbott said.

“I don’t see it going away so easy,” he said.

Michael Collins and Shelly Schultz of the USA TODAY NETWORK contributed to this story