Angry officials heading to D.C.

By Ed Runyan

The area’s high foreclosure and unemployment rates should have qualified it for more funding, officials said.

YOUNGSTOWN — Nine Mahoning Valley communities worked together to apply for federal housing-recovery stimulus money as a block. Now they want to know why there wasn’t a fairer distribution of that money across the state.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-17th of Niles, Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams and others spoke at a press conference Monday and urged Valley residents to sign an online petition that they hope will demonstrate to officials in Washington how unhappy they are about the snub.

The petition is be available at www.mvorganizing.org.

The officials will travel to Washington on Wednesday to discuss what went wrong with the Valley’s application with White House urban affairs officials.

“For us to be this blatantly shortchanged is outrageous,” Ryan said of the local proposal, which was denied any of the $2 billion awarded nationally last week and $159 million awarded in Ohio for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program. HUD awarded money to 79 of 482 proposals.

The Mahoning Valley was awarded about $11.1 million in the first round of the program when George W. Bush was president in October 2008.

The program is designed to allow governments and nonprofit agencies to help their communities stabilize their neighborhoods by addressing problems associated with foreclosure and home abandonments, the federal government said.

Officials such as Williams and Kurt Noden, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, which works closely with the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, say local foreclosure and unemployment statistics suggest that the Mahoning Valley needs the money more than any other area in Ohio.

Williams says Youngstown has the highest foreclosure rate in the United States, and Noden pointed out that Warren and Youngstown have led the state in the unemployment rate for most of 2009.

“Leaders throughout the Valley are sorely disappointed that the work we have done and our efforts continue to be ignored, while larger cities in Ohio reap big benefits,” Noden said in a press release.

Williams said he is a big supporter of President Barack Obama’s, but the Obama administration is risking losing support here if it can’t find a way to help the area. Officials aren’t dismissing the possibility that the zero funding was an oversight that can still be corrected.

Williams, a lifelong Democrat who ran as an independent the first time he was elected Youngstown mayor, said he wonders now if he should have run as an independent during his second campaign.

Williams said that because people here give such strong support to Democrats running for president, it’s possible that their support is taken for granted once the candidate is elected.

Ryan said it is important to hold the Obama administration’s “feet to the fire” and tell Washington that: “We don’t have an inferiority complex. We’re not going to let someone walk all over us and get up and have it happen all over again.

“There are going to be consequences to decisions that are made because there is no reason why this application didn’t get funded,” the congressman said.

“We flat-out met the criteria” to get funded, Ryan said, adding that the decision is a “double affront” because the region has always been such a strong supporter of Democrats in the White House.

In a press release, Noden’s organization also criticized state officials, including Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, who promised one year ago that the Valley would not be overlooked when stimulus money was being distributed.

“Top state officials, including the lieutenant governor, promised to deliver,” the press release said.

Michael Keys, director of community development for the city of Warren, said the state of Ohio was given an allocation of $25 million to distribute to 33 smaller counties in Ohio, including Columbiana, Portage and Jefferson, but not Mahoning or Trumbull.

runyan@vindy.com