Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Environment & Public Work Committee, introduced Dr. James Leiman, the Commissioner of the North Dakota Department of Commerce, as a witness at the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee hearing on the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) programs today.
“Thank you for your service to the people of North Dakota,” said Senator Cramer.“Dr. Leiman has demonstrated an incredible ability to attract interest and capital to North Dakota and to develop our abundant natural resources, particularly natural gas resources. We’re grateful you’re here and look forward to hearing your testimony.”
“Albeit small for a small state, these grants do make a big difference; however, as you consider reauthorization, we would like to request a few adjustments. First and foremost, we find that a lot of the programs are top down and as a result it’s very difficult for us as a state to acclimate and use those programs to their full advantage. In effect programs that might work for the coast don’t necessarily work for the middle of the country. By shifting rural development to be a more bottom up strategy our communities know where to go using an asset based approach for rural development,” said Commissioner Leiman.
During the hearing, Senator Cramer and Commissioner Leiman focused on streamlining processes within the EDA for rural states and communities.
“Does anybody have any ideas about how we can reconcile multitude of programs?”asked Senator Cramer. “EDA has one set of rules and you have to do all this paperwork, but they’re not the same as a CDBG grant, which is not the same as a USDA Rural Development grant, which is not the same as an SBA loan program. Not that they have to be identical, but… we can maybe reconcile some of that so they’re not so burdensome.”
“Especially in smaller or lower populated counties, they may not have the requisite staffing to put together these burdensome approaches. My suggestion would be to reduce duplicity in terms of programmatic delivery… In some applications you can have requirements as high as several hundred pages and in local communities that is very burdensome,” said Commissioner Leiman. “My suggestion is for the EDA to have a rural development taskforce so local communities can help streamline the process.”
The senator concluded his remarks by asking the other witnesses, Region VII Planning and Development Council Executive Director Shane Whitehair and The Brookings Institute Metropolitan Policy Program Vice President Amy Liu, for suggestions on improving the burdensome nature of federal program navigation which primarily impacts rural economic development organizations.