Throughout 2021, Rural Appalachian Ohio continued its rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on public health and the economy. Appalachian Ohio’s Local Development Districts (LDDs), working in partnership with the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Governor’s Office of Appalachia, and local communities, administered 44 projects representing $74.9 million in federal, state, and local investments. These projects are spurring the creation of 809 new jobs and helping the region retain 366 positions. An overview of these projects is available in the recently-released 2021 Appalachian Ohio Return on Investment Report.
Ohio’s Appalachian communities are served by four LDDs: Buckeye Hills Regional Council, Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, Ohio Mid-Eastern Governments Association, and Ohio Valley Regional Development Commission.
Once again, Ohio’s LDDs demonstrated a strong return on investment on state and federal dollars in 2021. For each dollar invested by the Appalachian Regional Commission, LDDs and their local communities leveraged an additional investment of $6.14. Likewise, for each dollar invested by the Governor’s Office of Appalachia, LDDs and local communities leveraged additional investments of $6.49.
The combined admin costs of $1.42 million represented only 1.8% of the region’s total $74.9 million in total project costs. Ohio’s LDDs use this administrative support to identify, prioritize, and package projects for state and federal support. The LDDs work to ensure the most impactful projects that leverage significant resources can move forward expeditiously, with transparency and accountability.
The Return on Investment Report serves as an annual report prepared by all four LDDs to demonstrate the return on investment from funds received from the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Governor’s Office of Appalachia.
Ohio is home to 32 Appalachian counties and bolsters federal ARC funding with a matching state investment. Within this region, the four Appalachian Ohio LDDs organize community-driven projects and target funds for distribution from federal and state partners to ensure positive movement toward the mission of the ARC: to bring the region to socioeconomic parity.
The most important role of LDDs is to identify the priority needs of their local communities. To ensure that funds are used effectively and efficiently, and to strengthen local participation, Ohio’s project selection process includes a grassroots approach through which local governments prioritize both the state and federal investments across the region for the greatest regional impact.
With a 50-year history of providing administrative, policy, and programmatic support to local governments, Appalachian Ohio’s LDDs possess:
- Expertise on economic and social challenges facing the region.
- Organizational transparency, accountability, and capacity managing major projects to address many types of regional infrastructure needs—and with a great return on investment (ROI).
- Deep knowledge of the region’s challenges and opportunities for infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and workforce development.
- Solid, trusted relationships with local communities and key stakeholders in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.
As Appalachian Ohio continues to recover from the historic pandemic, Ohio’s Local Development Districts continue to work with communities to support projects that align with the Appalachian Regional Commission’s strategic goals of Building Appalachia’s Businesses, Workforce Ecosystem, Community Infrastructure, Regional Culture and Tourism, and Community Leaders and Capacity.