Governors’ Roundtable discussion tackles persistent rural poverty

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, Virgina Gov. Terry McAuliffe, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (and former Iowa Gov.) Tom Vilsack, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. Photo by David Hathcox

Four governors discuss strategies for combating institutional poverty in rural areas

With rural counties accounting for 85 percent of counties in persistent poverty, four governors discussed steps their administrations are taking to alleviate poverty in their rural areas. The answer was elementary — elementary education and beyond.

For Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R), now in his second term, the aggregate employment picture is great, with a higher raw number of people with jobs than ever before.

“But the growth is not uniform across the state,” he said. “While unemployment is down four points, that’s not across the board and our rural areas are struggling the most.”

He identified tourism as one of the greatest sectors of potential growth under current conditions, but even that had a caveat.

“We did a survey, asking of all the jobs that will exist 10 years from now, what will they look like,” he said. “We found that 55 percent will require some kind of certificate beyond high school. In our rural areas, we have about 15–20 percent, so it made that challenge really acute.”

Haslam’s answer was the Tennessee Promise: two years of free community college or technical school education to anyone who graduates from high school

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has seen the ebb and flow that comes with the level of federal investment in his commonwealth.

“We’re the number one recipient of Department of Defense dollars, we have 27 military installations, the largest naval base in the world, Quantico, the CIA, the Pentagon, all in Virginia,” he said. “That’s great when they’re spending money, but when you have a government shutdown, a sequestration and another sequestration, it has a dramatic impact on the economy.”

He reflected on what economic downturns and subsequent migration could mean for the economic viability of the southern parts of his state.

“Coal, tobacco, textile, furniture... they have all been decimated and what is left are probably the most honest, hardworking folk you have ever met in your life,” he said. ”But I have zero chance of bringing a business to a community if they don’t think they’ll have a workforce, 20 or 30 years from today. You need a workforce, and that workforce starts with education, with pre-K.”

And what’s just as important as what they learn is the condition in which they try to learn, so McAuliffe is working to provide universal breakfast to all students by the end of his term-limited four years in office.

Both McAuliffe and Haslam convene “children’s cabinets,” representatives from departments that enact policy which affects children,

Utah Gary Herbert (R) stressed the natural support systems that come with the family unit, provided it’s done in the right way.

“We teach our children in schools, if you want to avoid poverty, here are four steps: get a good education...get a job...get married...have children, and do them in that order,” he said. “You’ll have a better chance at staying out of poverty than people who do them out of order.”

He touted the state’s 10 percent child poverty rate, compared to the 15 percent national average. And he stressed flexibility in programming.

“What works in an urban area of Utah might not work in a rural area,” he said. “We trust the local officials to do it best,” and tell the state how their demographics will impact program delivery.

First-term Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) sees a lot of his state’s rural population facing a crisis of intergenerational transfer of farm assets.

“We’re a mid-Atlantic state, but agriculture is our biggest industry,” he said. “We have to make sure the younger generation wants to stay where they grew up and take over the family farm.”

But those rural communities need more than just farms to be attractive, and sparse population makes it hard to reach critical mass for development. Regardless, Wolf has made education funding a centerpiece of his administration, enough so that his budget request to raise education funding has led to an eight-month budget impasse with the Legislature.

Having a good education system “is a special set of challenges in rural areas, where you have less-dense population, you need to take advantage of new technology like distance learning to make sure children have access to the 21st century world,” he said. “We need to be able to provide a good education to our kids,  if they don’t get that education, we’re all in tough shape.”

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