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How much money must the Appalachian Regional Commission have spent on a "collaboration with Next Street" that produced "Access to Capital and Credit for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses Across Appalachia?"
Takeaways for the ARC include acknowledging that small businesses drive "economic and cultural vitality across the Appalachian Region," and finding that there are "significant barriers" for those businesses to access capital and credit. Earth shattering.
Challenges discovered in the report include: A gap between capital supply and demand, geographic constraints and limited and inconsistent information.
Well, we can't do anything about the geographic constraints. If only we had a government agency that had spent the past nearly 60 years working with policy makers and other public officials on the capital and information challenges.
Remember, the ARC calls itself an economic development partnership entity of the federal government with a mission "to innovate, partner, and invest to build community capacity and strengthen economic growth in Appalachia."
For fiscal year 2025 it asked Congress for $200 million (the same as FY2024). The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides $1 billion for ARC activities over five years through FY2026.
Meanwhile, the agency has put together a report that says things like "Unmet capital demand represents a $70 billion growth opportunity in Appalachia." But there are challenges such as consolidations and branch closures inhibiting local access to banks; the most prevalent loan sizes not always meeting the needs of small businesses; and strict requirements that are not always easy for new businesses to meet or document.
It's the kind of stuff that should have been foundational knowledge for this agency. On the other hand, the report does note: "Increasing the ability of regional and community lenders to access capital is critically important," and "Encouraging and designing coordinated programs for investors, developers and entrepreneurs to address emerging industries' challenges can mobilize marketplaces throughout Appalachia and spur innovation."
Let's get to encouraging and designing -- we've got the money and generations of a sense of urgency.
Not so fast. First, according to its own "FY 2025 Budget Summary and Highlights" the ARC dealt with receiving more federal money by "judiciously increased capacity internally and with state partners to meet the demands of deploying this new level of funding."
Surely there are good people who truly believe they should be working to fulfill their responsibility to Appalachia at the ARC. But it seems that determination does not stand up to the decades of bureaucratic culture that whispers "if they grow and thrive, they won't need the ARC."