Friday March 29th, 2024 2:09AM

Homeland security focus may stall Black Belt agency

WASHINGTON - A senator's vision for an agency targeting poverty in the Southern ``Black Belt'' could turn out to be yet another victim of Sept. 11, at least in the short-term.

Much has changed since Georgia Sen. Zell Miller proposed the concept in summer 2001, just months before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington pushed creation of a Homeland Security Department to the top of the congressional agenda.

And so, earlier this month, when the University of Georgia concluded in its 18-month study that indeed an agency could be helpful in combating poverty in the stream of heavily black Southern counties, even Miller's reaction was muted.

``It is obvious that this is not the best time to be thinking about starting a new federal agency with new federal expenditures,'' said Miller, who shepherded through Congress the legislation authorizing the $250,000 feasibility study.

It's not that Miller is abandoning the idea. His concept just encountered tough timing, and he doubts the congressional appetite is there after a divisive homeland security debate when critics complained the new department adds bureaucratic strings to an already bloated federal budget.

Instead, Miller is talking about smaller steps to ``re-channel and better coordinate our already-existing resources,'' with the possibility of an agency still viable for down the road.

Others, however, are pushing to move forward now. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., this year proposed a bill creating a Black Belt agency, and he plans to introduce it again when Congress reconvenes next month.

``There are too many families suffering too long to face further delay in getting the kind of help they need to recover from the economic distress,'' McIntyre said.

McIntyre and Miller haven't spoken much about the concept, but they both are targeting the same area: a belt of counties spanning from Texas to Virginia that have low employment, poor access to health care, substandard housing, dismal graduation rates, high infant mortality rates, and little social and physical infrastructure.

The study concluded an agency or commission should concentrate on developing a modern work force in 242 counties with ``persistent poverty'' 26 in Alabama, 26 in Florida, 91 in Georgia, 18 in Mississippi, 41 in North Carolina, 28 in South Carolina and 12 in Virginia. Counties in Texas and Louisiana could also be included.

It's not unprecedented for Congress to identify a region lagging behind and create a branch of the federal government to deal with it. Miller, who grew up in the mountains of northern Georgia, witnessed firsthand the success of the Appalachian Regional Commission, the agency created in the 1960s to target communities like his.

Since then, other anti-poverty agencies have been established, including one that overlaps somewhat with the Black Belt. The Delta Regional Authority covers a 200-county territory surrounding the Mississippi River.

Louis Segesvary, spokesman for the Appalachian Regional Commission, points out times were different when the ARC became law in 1965. President Kennedy had made Appalachian poverty a focus of his 1960 campaign, raising consciousness across the country.

``You had the prestige of the president originally driving the concept,'' Segesvary said. ``There was a general understanding in the country about the extreme poverty in Appalachia, that there was really a divide between Appalachia and the rest of the country.''

But Rep.-elect Artur Davis, who will represent several impoverished, heavily black counties in the Birmingham, Ala., area, said the Black Belt faces the same problems, even if fewer people know about them. Davis wants to use his congressional post almost as a mayor and pledges to be an ``executive advocate'' for the territory. One way to do that is to create an agency, he said.

``I don't think we can make this country what it needs to be without putting a persistent, aggressive effort toward recreating the Black Belt,'' Davis said. ``I don't agree this is the wrong time. I think this is absolutely the right time.''

Although Southern lawmakers are obviously pushing the idea the most, there seems to be no real partisan divide. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said he also wants to see an agency but agrees with Miller's assessment that it might be met with congressional resistance now.

``The Congress, I don't believe, is going to vote for a bill to throw a bunch of money at a program,'' Sessions said. ``That's why our legislation is going to have to be smart, going to have to be targeted. I think the Congress would be sympathetic to working to relieve some of the deepest poverty in the country, but we're going to have to have a program that works.''
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