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The Appalachian Regional Commission: An Experiment in Intergovernmental Management

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is fighting for its life! Since early in 1981 the Reagan administration has vigorously pursued a plan to dismantle the 18-year-old agency on the grounds that it has outlived its usefulness, requires national funds that should be cut from the budget, and represents an unnecessary "fourth layer of government". The ARC has continued to operate during the 1982 and 1983 fiscal years, thanks to Congressional support which is increasingly uncertain, with annual appropriations of approximately $150 million (about half of previous levels of federal funding) . But, even its strongest backers concede that ARC has been mortally wounded and will do well to accomplish a threeto eight-year "finishup program" which has been proposed by the Appalachian governors as an alternative to Reagan's call for an immediate shutdown (Louisville Courier-Journal, March 2, 1983). Since its creation in 1965, the ARC has funnelled nearly $5 billion into highway and area development programs located within the 397 counties of 13 states which it defines as Appalachian. To many, both opponents and supporters, the ARC is one of the last vestiges of the Great Society program. For them its demise would represent another victory in the efforts of Presidents Nixon and Reagan to rid the federal government of the "war on poverty" legacy of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Since there is no doubt that the founders of the ARC were primarily interested in creating a program of federal spending for a depressed area, in the beginning the organizational character of the agency was more or less incidental to the assistance program. However, the ARC has developed into a unique, joint national/state commission and today is recognized as the ? original and prototypic interstate agency for regional economic development (Wright, 1982, p. 333). Beyond the obvious loss of federal dollars to Appalachia, the death of ARC would mark the end of an innovative and ambitious experiment in intergovernmental management. Con-