Rural leaders pitch county capacity building

Key Takeaways

Counties are making the best of another year without a farm bill, using that time to articulate how Congress can better equip them for success. Their message is already coalescing around ways government policy can simplify federal-local cooperation and address capacity limitations.

And while one year is likely too little time to comprehensively address the scope of rural prosperity and economic development, it’s a chance to move the discussion in the right direction, as county leaders discussed Nov. 19 during NACo’s Rural Action Caucus (RAC) Fly-In, in Washington, D.C.

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Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity

“What we do have is a lot of programs, and that shows a lot of responsiveness on behalf of Congress, but we don’t really have a coherent national rural policy at this point,” Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Tony Pipa told county leaders.

“Rural counties have more fiscal constraints than the metro counties,” he noted. “They have limits on their administrative capacity that are distinct from suburban and urban areas.” 

Ben Hill County, Ga. Commissioner Hope Harmon said staffing is her county’s greatest limitation.

“We simply do not have the capacity of the staff to be able to apply for grants,” she said.

The Southern Georgia Regional Commission is a lifeline for Ben Hill County, offering staff who can contribute not just to writing and executing grants, but finding grants that align with particular counties.

“So, we are blessed that we have a great regional commission, but even regional commissions don’t have the same resources everywhere,” she said. 

Crawford County, Iowa Supervisor Ty Rosburg hopes to diversify his county’s economic base so it isn’t so reliant on an aging Smithfield Foods packing plant. But expertise is limited by a relatively small county workforce.

“On our Board of Supervisors, we have two farmers, a banker, an insurance agent and I own a trucking business, so our specialty is not economic development,” he said.  “The different professions don’t sound like a big deal, but a city’s got them in abundance. We don’t have them. And in a small county like ours, I am my staff.”

Other counties are limited by finances and the expectation that federal bureaucracy will work smoothly. But Saline County, Mo. will end up paying more for a wastewater treatment plant because federal grants that have been authorized for three and five years, respectively, still haven’t reached the county coffers. Residential development in the county depends on that plant being finished in a few years, so the county has no choice but to borrow money to bridge the gap, which Commissioner Stephanie Gooden called a significant burden.

“We have so much red tape to jump through,” said Gooden. “We’ve been through a couple of government shutdowns. It would be so much easier if we just got the award directly like with ARPA (the American Rescue Plan Act).” 

Making change

Saline County’s delayed grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and Economic Development Administration stretch back years, but Pipa said the transition between presidential administrations will likely result in more instability for rural counties after years of direct investment by ARPA, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act and as counties adjust to new federal priorities and different governing styles.

“A lot of those resources were made available over the last three to four years, and now it’s swinging back to where we’ve seen a contracting footprint on the federal side,” he said. “And it... makes it difficult to navigate for the future. What does the future look like when you’re halfway down the road in trying to build a project, and have the funding for that project, and all of a sudden that’s shifting?”

Olga Morales-Pate, CEO of Rural Community Assistance Partnership, wondered about the long-term viability of farm bills and the consequences of the extensions; the latest was a part of the continuing resolution that ended the federal shutdown. Passed in 2018, it predates the pandemic and was forged in a much different economy.

“If you look at the provisions that happened in the last few months, it makes you wonder if we are living in a post-farm-bill reality,” she said. “I hope not. There’s obviously a need for more stability... there doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of desire for compromise to really develop policy.”

Ann Lichter, director of Resource Rural, said the farm bill’s continuance gives counties a chance to provide more feedback about how they interact with federal programs, in hopes of influencing future legislation.

“We know there are programs that aren’t working, we’ve got some opportunities to get rid of red tape,” she said. “That’s how we build a bigger coalition; if we can demonstrate that, ‘no, it’s not just business as usual, we actually are going to change how some of these programs work.’”

Jonathan Harwitz, director of public policy at the Housing Assistance Council, noted that rural capacity challenges are compounded by federal policy largely not being designed with rural communities in mind.

In hopes of addressing that design flaw, Pipa will spend the next two years leading Brookings’ participation with the American Enterprise Institute on their Bipartisan Commission on Rural Policy. Following consultation with rural stakeholders, along with six site visits around the country that will include public hearings, the commission aims to publish a national rural strategy by fall 2027, complete with policy recommendations for federal and state policymakers ahead of the 2028 election.

Pipa noted that there was some consideration in the revision of the Opportunity Zones program, which offers capital gains tax incentives for investors who invest in designated distressed communities. Its earlier variation saw little rural participation, but “there were changes made to make it more sympathetic to rural places,” Pipa said.” Governors are going to be creating their maps on who’s available for Opportunity Zone investment, and rural places should loom large in those maps.”

New legislation

The fly-in followed the reintroduction of the bipartisan Rural Partnership and Prosperity Act, which would create a grant program providing multiyear, flexible awards to communities to be used to address urgent needs, including:

• Affordable childcare
• Housing
• Job training
• Technical assistance grants to help rural communities navigate existing federal funding opportunities and ensure they get their fair share of private and federal investments, and
• Improved supportive services offered by the federal government to rural communities.