McDonnell makes promises to Virginia’s rural leaders at Lynchburg conference

Virginia’s rural leaders can expect both attention and new-business stimulation from Richmond if he’s elected governor, Republican Bob McDonnell promised in Lynchburg on Monday.

“I’d like to find ways for the governor’s office to work with community-based banks” to relax lending rules for entrepreneurs who want to start up small businesses, McDonnell told state and local officials at the Virginia Rural Summit.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6th District, also spoke to the audience of about 60 state and local officials, telling them why he dislikes federal stimulus funding and proposed health care legislation.

McDonnell, with 50 days remaining in his gubernatorial campaign against Democrat Creigh Deeds, told the group that access to credit is “the number one challenge to economic recovery today.“

McDonnell said he wants to double the governor’s economic opportunity fund to $40 million over the next two years.

The fund provides incentives for new-business development, and McDonnell said he wants to make that money accessible to rural areas so that businesses promising just 50 new jobs - or 25 jobs in distressed areas - could qualify for assistance.

His remarks drew one round of applause from those in attendance at the Kirkley Hotel. Several local-government officials clapped when McDonnell promised there would be no “unfunded mandates” from his administration. Those mandates require local governments to meet state-level standards on environmental and other issues their own expense.

McDonnell also promised he would appoint a deputy secretary of commerce to work full time on rural economic development, and that either McDonnell or Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling would visit places with double-digit unemployment every 30 days to talk with state, local and private-sector leaders to make plans for job creation and business growth.

Goodlatte said he opposed federal stimulus funding and that it has done little to rebuild infrastructure and is slow in providing new jobs.

“One example of that is broadband spending, which is well behind what it should have been,“ Goodlatte said.

He acknowledged the broadband effort, which would bring high-speed Internet to rural areas, has been hampered partly because federal funding would compete unfairly with private businesses that have invested in broadband access.

Also, the first draft of rules to guide broadband deployment would put the eastern United States at a disadvantage because the draft favors less-populated areas of the Midwest and West.

The draft “also has the unfair side effect of meaning the Eastern U.S., which is a more densely populated part of the country, is going to be at a disadvantage if these proposed guidelines do not change,“ Goodlatte said.

Goodlatte also criticized proposed federal changes in health care as being too costly.

He noted that one suggestion at a town hall meeting he held in Lynchburg on Saturday produced a suggestion that programs like the city’s Johnson Health Center could meet many people’s health care needs.

“This would be at a fraction of the cost of the legislation before Congress, and would answer many of the health care needs of individuals right now that aren’t being met,“ Goodlatte said.