New rural Pennsylvania commission features 2 representatives from Butler County
On the sixth day of the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, the brand-new Pennsylvania Rural Population Revitalization Commission was formally introduced to the public during a half hour livestream from the Crossroads Conference Center on Thursday afternoon, Jan. 9.
The commission, including two people from Butler County, was created in June with the signing of Act 21, which amended the Rural Pennsylvania Revitalization Act to establish the new commission. The aim of the new commission is to address the threat of population decline in rural areas in Pennsylvania.
The catalyst for starting the commission was a population study released by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, which predicted that the population of the state’s rural counties would experience a decline of 5.8% by 2050.
“The idea that the rural population is going to decrease has all kinds of ramifications,” said state Sen. Gene Yaw, R-23rd, chairman of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania. “It’s health care; it’s what happens in our schools, law enforcement, everything.”
The Center for Rural Pennsylvania is a bipartisan legislative agency, which is overseen directly by the state legislature, and was established in 1987. The Rural Population Revitalization Commission, whose creation was recommended by the center, is designed to suggest legislation and regulatory change which would retain Pennsylvania’s rural population.
Yaw called the commission’s creation a classic example of government working as intended.
“The center itself … basically, we find facts. We do not, and we have deliberately stayed out of the idea of making specific recommendations. We did not want to put the Center for Rural Pennsylvania in that position,” said Yaw. “We decided we should have a separate entity that should address these issues about rural population, and they can, if they choose to, make recommendations.”
Among the 15 members of the new commission are two prominent figures in Butler County: Jordan Grady, president of the Butler County Chamber of Commerce; and Dr. Karen Riley, president of Slippery Rock University, who is there as a representative of a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education school that’s in a rural county. Grady was appointed to the commission directly by Gov. Josh Shapiro in August.
Other commission members include two state senators and two state representatives.
Dr. Kyle C. Kopko, chairman of the new commission, introduced the 14 other members by name during his closing speech. Kopko said that commission members have held listening sessions and regional meetings since September — both in-person and virtually — including at least one in Slippery Rock.
“This is an opportunity for us to hear from stakeholders on the ground on what’s needed in their community to ensure that we can revitalize rural Pennsylvania,” Kopko said.
