Home >  Local News

Monday, June 16, 2003

By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Armstrong County Commissioner James Scahill didn't sound like a big fan of regional economic cooperation back in October 2001.

James Scahill Age: 55 Residence: Kittanning, Armstrong County In the news: As an Armstrong County commissioner, he played the lead role in getting his county added to what had been a six-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area. Quote: "We touch Allegheny County at the Freeport area. It's just a corner, but it's just as important as any other county that touches Allegheny." Education: Indiana University of Pennsylvania, bachelor's degree in English education, 1970; bachelor's, IUP, business administration/accounting, 1978. Career: County commissioner since January 1992; executive vice president, Pennsylvania Coal Association, 1978-90. Family: Wife Audrey; two daughters, Erin, 22, and Katie, 16, and twin sons, James and John, 19. Photo by Bill Wade, Post-Gazette

He was hopping mad after unexpectedly losing out to Allegheny County in a contest to land a much-coveted Siemens Westinghouse fuel-cell plant and its 500 jobs.

"Call the coroner -- regionalism is probably dead," snapped the outspoken Scahill, who'd been blindsided by Allegheny County's last-minute entry into the competition for the $122 million facility, which Scahill thought was headed to an industrial park in Armstrong County.

Last week, Scahill was again talking about economic cooperation in the Pittsburgh metro area, but from a distinctly different viewpoint.

This time he'd won a major victory, as the leading force in getting Armstrong County made part of the Pittsburgh "metropolitan statistical area," or MSA, a six-county group that now has grown to seven. The others are Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

"I was exuberant," he said about the federal government's decision. "This [exclusion] had been a longtime denial. Some people said we couldn't do it."

One reason why Armstrong is included in the MSA is that just over 25 percent of its residents work in one of the other six counties. That's one of the important criteria the federal government uses in deciding which counties should belong to the MSA, Scahill said.

"My wife's one of them. She's a medical secretary for a group of doctors in Butler County," he said.

The most immediate change in the federal designation was to add Armstrong's 72,000 residents to the Pittsburgh metro area. But the change, which had to be approved by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, could also mean more attention and, potentially, more money for the rural county northeast of Pittsburgh, whose county seat is Kittanning.

Scahill, 55, said adding Armstrong into the metro area should increase Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements for county hospitals and could help boost marketing efforts and tourism.

According to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, a regional planning agency, the size of a metropolitan statistical area "can drive economic development, attracting the attention of regional and national site selectors" for new industry.

Scahill has been advocating his county's inclusion in the Pittsburgh metro statistical region since he first became a county commissioner in 1992.

He said he was approached, soon after taking office, by businessmen, one who ran a nursing home and one who promoted recreation and entertainment, "who couldn't believe we weren't in the [Pittsburgh] MSA.

"So we started asking the [regional planning agency] and our congressman, John Murtha, who's been working on this for a while."

Aside from politics, Scahill has a major interest in hunting and in history, especially details about the French and Indian War.

He said he hunts many types of small game, as well as deer and even on occasion bear in Armstrong and Jefferson counties.

"I never got one, but a friend of mine did. He shot a bear weighing 565 pounds in Armstrong County."

Scahill's county is named for Col. John Armstrong, a colonial officer who won an important battle in September 1765, defeating Indians at the village of Kittanning.

Scahill is interested in a regional effort to promote tourism of battlefields from the French and Indian War, such as the defeat of English troops at Braddock in Allegheny County and the Fort Necessity battlefield in Fayette County.

One thing that makes the Kittanning site difficult is that most of the important remains from the 1765 battle are buried below the present day town.

Scahill said he's gotten over his disappointment at losing Siemens and once again is a major backer of regionalism in this area.

"I still believe our safety is in hanging together and working together," he said.

The model he uses is the Chapel Hill-Raleigh area of North Carolina, where five counties are working together for the good of the region.

"It's a natural that we start thinking in terms of what is good for all [seven counties]," he said. "Nobody will bring a company into an area where you have fratricide among counties."