Leslie Ferguson-Oles, chief advancement officer for the advocacy group the Mountain Association, said the Trump Administration's plan to slash funding would be devastating for rural counties in the eastern part of the state.
"It's really hard to kind of imagine what the infrastructure of community economic development would look like without the Appalachian Regional Commission," Ferguson-Oles explained.
President Donald Trump’s discretionary budget proposal calls to cut the agency’s funding by 93%, slashing it from $200 million to $14 million in fiscal year 2026.
Ferguson-Oles pointed out the progress the region has made on diversifying its economy would stall without the state-federal partnership facilitated by the commission.
"It would just be a disappointing point in that process for us to lose funding," Ferguson-Oles emphasized. "By us, I mean the communities of Eastern Kentucky."
The Appalachian Regional Commission is an economic partnership between the federal government and 13 state governments, including Kentucky, in a historically impoverished region of the U.S. Congress created the commission in 1965.
This story is based on original reporting by McKenna Horsley for the Kentucky Lantern.