STEUBENVILLE - What do a steelworker, a port authority director and a township trustee have in common?

Each has a perspective on the state of the economy and ways the federal government could assist.

They were among people testifying to Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, as he held a formal U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee hearing titled "Path to Opportunity: Jobs and the Economy in Appalachia" at Jefferson Community College Wednesday.

During a break in the testimony, Brown explained the purpose of the hearing is to help guide formulation of an economic stimulus, to help communities and residents in the short term and long term.

"It's all about job creation," Brown said.

He said Ohio has much going for it, including ranking among the top five in production of wind turbines and solar energy equipment. He also noted Cleveland is second only to Minneapolis, Minn., for biomedical investment, which he defined as the development of new kinds of treatments and care.

"Ohio is well situated to grow in manufacturing of biomedical and alternative energy," he said.

Brown said among the jobs to be done is for the government to be working with institutions such as Jefferson Community College to be sure training is provided to fill the jobs that will be available.

"There are two things that college presidents need to be doing," Brown said. "They have to be going into the high schools and junior high schools and help the kids know how to navigate college. And they have to work with the business community to be sure they're developing the skills that will keep people here."

In introducing the hearing, Brown said Ohio's 7.4 percent unemployment rate is the highest it's been in 15 years and that the economy had been declining across the state before the economic downturn of recent weeks.

"This economic deterioration was like a kidney punch after going 12 rounds in the ring," he said.

Steelworker John DiPietro of Steubenville is 59 years old and has worked at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp., now Severstal Wheeling, for more than 37 years. He told Brown the economy has affected his job, his family, his retirement and pension and his community.

He was a wastewater treatment operator at the cold strip mill in the Steubenville North plant, but the job was eliminated this year with the closure of the cold strip. Now, with Severstal cutting production around the world to deal with slack demand, he is assigned to jobs week by week.

"After 37 years, I'm a week-to-week assignment worker," he said. Severstal has been operating its furnaces at Mingo Junction and the continuous caster and hot strip mill on a week-by-week basis this month. It had spent millions to refurbish a blast furnace and its basic oxygen furnace, but those haven't been restarted. Hundreds of workers are affected by the sporadic operations. DiPietro said there are about $11 million in investments needed to bring the cold strip mill to viability.

"Severstal is a global company. We are starting to wonder if the money will be invested," he said.

The week-to-week employment changes "lead to a lot of turmoil and anxiety," DiPietro told Brown.

He said his pension plan was taken over by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in 2003, when Wheeling-Pitt was in bankruptcy, and the benefits were frozen. He had been working toward having a $1,600 a month retirement, but the level was frozen at less than half that. He said he's taken the money out and invested it in the United Steelworkers retirement fund for the mill, but the fall in the stock market has eroded his 401(k) plan.

"What I thought was a fact became a myth," DiPietro testified. "How do you plan for anything like this?"

He said the decline also means the mills pay less taxes to local schools, which has an impact on the quality of education.

"If you cannot afford a solid education with job opportunities here after they graduate, the community will erode," DiPietro said. Under questioning from Brown, he noted his adult daughters live in Ada, Ohio, and the Philadelphia area and he doubts his son, a senior at Ohio State University, will return here.

Prior to the session, DiPietro explained he had been tapped by United Steelworkers Local 1190 to represent the Steelworkers for testimony at the hearing.

Brown asked what jobs need to be here to keep young people here after getting an education.

"High-paying manufacturing jobs would be the key," he said. DiPietro said most of his former co-workers who lost jobs have left the area while those left are working at jobs that pay much less. He said he doubts they consider themselves "middle class."

Brown also heard from Harry Eadon, executive director of the Tuscarawas County Port Authority in Dover. He told Brown investments by the government need to be for the short term and long term.

"We didn't drive ourselves into this position overnight," Eadon said. "We won't come out of it overnight. It will take more than a year or two years or three years. We've already started in some ways."

He said the manufacturing jobs that can locate in the region require workers with advanced training. He also said while the Dover-New Philadelphia area has access to the state's high-speed computer network, the lack of such access puts much of the area at a disadvantage when trying to land modern manufacturing or alternative energy companies.

"Essentially, we are training people to leave," he said. As an example, he said colleges in the Tuscarawas County area graduated 150 people with skills in computer animation last year, but only 10 to 15 found jobs in the area.

Frank Shaffer, a trustee in Pultney Township, Belmont County, explained to Brown the plight of residents who live on Mount Victory Road.

He said there are about 152 families living along a 28-mile stretch of rural road in the southern part of Belmont County with no municipal water supply. The families live mostly on small, part-time, family farms supplied by wells that do not provide enough water for a family of three to live on comfortably. The other alternative is cisterns that provide water that is not safe for drinking. The result is trips to buy or haul in water, sometimes more than once a day in the case of people running part-time farms. He said county officials want to help, but there is not money for the project without federal assistance.

Eadon also told Brown the federal government should make money available for local development efforts.

"Let the folks who live it every day figure out how best to spend the money to create jobs and opportunity for our region," he said. Tuscarawas County is home to a revolving loan fund of $585,000 to help existing business to grow or help new businesses to start.

He also testified that the Columbus-to-Pittsburgh highway corridor would "be a good way to open up a tremendous area that is not currently open to economic development."

During the second half of the hearing, Brown took testimony from Charles W. Fluharty, director of the Rural Policy Research Institute of Columbia, Mo.; Gary W. Ricer, chief executive officer of the GMN Tri-County Community Action Corp. in Caldwell; and Debra Martin, director of the Great Lakes Rural Community Assistance Program, from Fremont.

Students from the multimedia classes at Indian Creek High School assisted with setup at the college and taped the event for inclusion in the Congressional Record.