GLICKMAN URGES DEPRESSED COMMUNITIES TO SEEK RURAL EMPOWERMENT ZONE DESIGNATION
WASHINGTON, July 16, 1998 -- Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman today encouraged the most economically depressed parts of America to seek designation as one of five new Rural Empowerment Zones the Clinton Administration expects to create.
Speaking to attendees at the White House Community Development conference, Glickman said legislation is pending in Congress that would provide $200 million to create the five new Rural Empowerment Zones.
"President Clinton's Rural Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities Initiative (EZ/EC) is beginning to turn the tide of chronic poverty in communities and regions that in the past have been virtually written off as hopeless," Glickman said. "Since the EZ/EC initiative began in 1995, it has saved or created more than 9,940 jobs, built or rehabilitated 2,140 homes or apartments, built or improved 78 health care facilities and financed 110 drinking water and waste disposal systems, among many other accomplishments."
To date, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the rural portion of the EZ/EC effort, has committed over $230 million to the nation's three rural Empowerment Zones and 30 Enterprise Communities. Speaking to community activists, business owners, and federal, state and local government leaders from around the nation, Glickman said USDA funds have had an even bigger impact by leveraging an additional $617 million from private and other government sources.
"A special priority of this effort has been outreach to youth, and I'm especially proud that youth programs have provided job training and other services to 25,448 youths, most of them from low-income families," Glickman said, adding that USDA has also donated computers and other equipment to schools and libraries in EZs and ECs.
Almost 200 rural communities are expected to compete for an EZ designation. The winners are selected based on economic development plans they submit to USDA. The selected zones qualify for a wide variety of help from USDA, but all communities that apply benefit from the development of plans to help chart their future, said Glickman. Communities that submit plans but are not selected as an EZ will still be designated as Champion Communities. Last year those communities received $213 million in USDA funds.
"The EZ/EC initiative is the difference in whether these rural communities will grow and thrive, or will wither on the vine as more residents fall into unemployment and poverty," said Jill Long Thompson, USDA under secretary for rural development. "It is helping to revive the economy and improve living conditions in some of the nation's poorest rural communities."
Vice President Gore and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo also addressed the conference. HUD administers the urban portion of the EZ/EC program.
For more information on the EZ/EC program, contact USDA's Office of Community Development at (202) 619-7981, or e-mail ocd@rurdev.usda.gov, or visit the website at http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/ocd.
Media Contact: Laura Trivers, (202) 720-4623
laura.trivers@usda.gov
Public Contact: Dan Campbell, (202) 720-6483
dcampbel@rurdev.usda.gov