When Can We Say Fare Thee Well to the ARC?

At what point can we chuck the Appalachian Regional Commission into the dustbin of history?

The ARC was created under the Kennedy Administration.  It was meant to address issues of Appalachian poverty and underdevelopment that popped up repeatedly in the news media during the 1960s, most famously and unnervingly on Charles Kuraults' "Christmas in Appalachia" documentary.

Questions about the agency's effectiveness have dogged it since its inception, especially since its boundaries include many counties outside of any cultural or geographic definition of "Appalachia."

As the link below indicates, unemployment in counties covered by the Appalachian Regional Commission seems to, in most cases, be equal to, or even less than counties close by, but outside of the ARC's purview.

Unemployment by county, May 2012, from Washington Post

The ARC has a few problems.  First, the very foundation of the idea that there is an Appalachia is suspect.  Studies done in the 1950s and more recently indicate that there are other cultural frameworks that supersede the general notions of a linked region running along the ridges.  For example, the Ohio River basin has strong cultural, economic, and social patterns extending from east to west.  People in Parkersburg, West Virginia are more similar to those in Louisville than Spartanburg, South Carolina.  

Second, its most effective work is nearly complete.  The main tangible benefit that it brought to the region was the construction of highways to spur, or in some areas, even out, development.  This met with uneven success.  U.S. 119 from Charleston to Williamson has brought tremendous development.  U.S. 50 from Parkersburg to Clarksburg is convenient, but substantial development has not yet taken hold.

The ARC's other concerns, health care, higher education, and job development, are better left to the states.  The federal government could provide block grants for skills training.  States, however, can do their part by creating a competitive market that can help to not only sell the area for outside investment, but, more importantly, develop home grown enterprises.  Economic development can provide revenue for higher education and health care initiatives  that are more effectively done by state government, not federal bureaucracy.  And, of course, the various federal departments can handle some of these tasks as well.

Finally, one can make the argument that many areas are in far more desperate shape right now than the Appalachian region.  Most of California is suffering from severe unemployment.  It is hard to rationalize one region getting its very own bureaucratic commission.

It is time to cut government.  The ARC is a great place to start.