 VOLUME 62 NO. 3 — July - August 2003 |
The administrator of the agency charged with providing electricity, telecommunications, and sewer systems to rural America grew up on a 100-acre farm in Knifley, Ky., population 900. Hilda Gay Legg, administrator of the Rural Utilities Service, knows firsthand what a difference her agency can make to rural communities. She was 10 years old before indoor plumbing came to her home farm.
Both her parents worked off the farm but also raised cattle and a few hogs, grew timber and, at one time, tobacco. “Two character building events occurred for me: when my father gave up our tobacco quota and when he got his GED at about age 50,” Legg said.
A tobacco quota gives the producer the right to grow the highly valuable cash crop. Otherwise, it can’t be marketed. Legg explains, ”My father converted to the local Methodist church as a young man. Even though Methodists were considered liberal compared to, say, the Southern Baptists, since they believed tobacco and alcohol consumption was wrong, he gave up our quota. My father believed if you weren’t supposed to use it, you weren’t supposed to raise it for others to use.” Legg’s father, now 88, still works the farm with her brother.
A beneficiary of long supper-table discussions, Legg learned about government and taxes at her father’s knee. But only when she began studies in sociology at Campbellsville College did she begin to understand the connection between rural poverty and the need to access tools that can begin to reverse it. Before she landed the first job that led to her expertise in this area--as Co-Chairman of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in 1990--she had been a secondary school teacher, a member of the faculty at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Ky., worked as a field representative for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in Bowling Green, and earned an M.A. degree at Western Kentucky University.
But it was working in Sen. McConnell’s office that provided the background necessary for the jobs ahead. “During my time there, I became much more familiar with water programs, grant applications, county elected officials, mayors, and people who needed help from the federal government. That’s where I really began to learn that whole economic development piece, so when the ARC came along I was ready,” she said.
Legg came to RUS (the Jan.-March 2002 issue of the USDA News carried her complete biographical sketch, following her swearing-in to that position) from The Center for Rural Development in Somerset, Ky., following the job at ARC. She served as The Center’s CEO for seven years and built its reputation as a national model for economic development in rural areas. “I have been so fortunate between ARC, The Center, and here. I love my staff and I love and believe in what I do. You have to have water; you have to have electricity to turn on those computers; you have to have connectivity to take rural communities into the information age. What we do is just a basic part of helping rural communities help themselves.”
RUS provides capital for utility infrastructure to borrowers serving small communities unable to tap into local banks for big-ticket items like scrubbers for a coal-fired plant, DSL lines, or wastewater treatment plants. “What RUS provides is cost of money loans, at very desirable interest rates. The loan and grant programs help to build out electric distribution lines, electric generation and transmission facilities, high-speed telecommunication connectivity, and water and wastewater treatment facilities. We are contributing to the local economic base, which in turn helps pay property taxes and payroll taxes and contributes to the total economy of those rural communities.”
Last Book Read: “Leadership,” by Rudolph W. Giuliani and Ken Kurson
Hobbies: “It used to be gardening, antiquing or ‘junk-tiquing’-- but now my only other life outside my work is my son Dane (age 2).”
Favorite Food: “I like everything except pickled herring and anchovies.”
Last Movie Seen: “Frida”
Favorite Weekend Breakfast: Ham and biscuits, red eye gravy, two eggs, sliced tomatoes in summer, occasionally grits.
Priorities in the Months Ahead: “To put the final touches on our strategic plan and to begin a policy analysis process to make sure that RUS is looking down the road of the 21st Century. We need to start analyzing what’s happening in the industry that eventually will impact our borrowers and the government’s loan portfolio.” •
--Patricia Klintberg