Ashtabula County is on its way to joining the list of counties that are part of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).

The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday to reauthorize the commission and provide $510 million for it over the next five years (fiscal years 2008-12). The bill, introduced by Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) in the U.S. Senate, should head to President Bush later this week.

“Happy, happy,” said Deb Setliff, U.S. Rep. Steven LaTourette’s spokeswoman. She said the bill was a House-Senate bipartisan compromise bill and was passed with a voice vote. The Senate approved it earlier without a recorded vote.

The bill’s provisions designate 10 new counties to be part of ARC. An earlier version would have added 13 counties; only Ashtabula, Trumbull and Mahoning counties in Ohio survived the close shave.

The designation will allow Ashtabula County and its political subdivisions to tap into new sources of funding and piggyback those sources onto other grants. ARC also offers community planning resources and regional data and research.

“It gives you greater access and a good conduit to obtain other funding,” Setliff says.

One immediate benefit could be additional funding to assist homeowners in Austinburg who are burdened with the cost of hooking into new sewer lines. Setliff says the ARC designation could bring additional funding into that community, a case of piggybacking on the $700,000 in federal funds LaTourette recently secured for the $2.2-million project.

ARC counties receive the designation because their economies lag behind others in the region, which can make development otherwise financially impossible.

“As a member of Congress from West Virginia, I can attest to the tremendous work the Appalachian Regional Commission has done to bring clean water, safe roads, new jobs and a better quality of life to millions of people in the Appalachian region,” commented Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., a member of the House Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management Subcommittee. Capito said ARC has helped designated counties in her state leverage federal funds.

ARC counties are ranked within the ARC designation. Setliff says Ashtabula County is listed as “transitional”: that is, somewhat distressed and having an unemployment rate above the national average. The unemployment rate in Ashtabula County for May 2008, the most recent month for which data are available, was 6.6 percent, the highest of the three new ARC-designated counties. The U.S. rate was 5.2 percent, the state rate 5.9 percent.

States with counties in ARC are Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Four of Ohio’s counties are designated as being “distressed”: Meigs, Morgan, Pike and Vinton.

Setliff points out that Erie County, Pa., and the Pittsburgh region are both part of ARC.

Once a county gets ARC designation, it usually manages to hold onto it, even if the local economy improves. Setliff says a designation can be upgraded to “attainment” or “competitive,” however.

Of the 29 Ohio counties already designated, none is in attainment, although Clermont County, near Cincinnati, is “competitive.”

The bill also authorizes creation of the Economic and Energy Development Initiative to provide grants to develop new alternatives to use conventional energy resources. It establishes an “at risk” category for counties that risk qualifying for the distressed designation, and it includes language from the House that will discourage earmarking projects in future appropriations bills. It also amends current law to allow ARC to cover up to 70 percent of administrative costs for programs that address problems in communities at risk of becoming distressed.