Spotlight On: Jared Edgreen, Commissioner, Greene County
Key points:
- • Greene County secured $4 million in grants to support infrastructure and development.
- • Economic diversification and brownfield redevelopment are creating opportunities beyond coal.
- • Job creation and regional partnerships are central to retaining local talent.
October 2026 — In an interview with Invest:, Jared Edgreen, chairman of the Greene County Board of Commissioners, discussed grant funding, economic diversification, talent retention, partnerships, and Greene County’s priorities. “We have to be at the table,” Edgreen said.
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What developments and accomplishments have had the greatest impact on Greene County over the past year?
This past year, we received $4 million in grants. As a county, we rely on grant funds to support infrastructure, programming, and aging county buildings. We partner with townships and civic nonprofits to help bring some of those dollars back to Greene County. We have a smaller population than the surrounding counties, which leads us to pursue grants that help the county thrive. One of our barriers is infrastructure. We are a rural county.
We’re an hour outside Pittsburgh, with the more populous Washington County to our north. We have to rely on those grants. Last year, the $4 million in grant funding made it one of our biggest years for grants in the past 10 years. We’re excited about initiatives the commissioners and others in Greene County are pursuing. The commissioners are also moving beyond the traditional role of overseeing the county budget, 30 departments, and 310 employees. We are becoming more involved in economic development, attracting industry, and improving housing. We cannot lift the county on our own. That requires relationships and partnerships with outside entities.
How is Greene County diversifying while supporting industries central to its economy?
Coal tax revenue has driven Greene County for more than 100 years. We are an energy-centric county, and we still rely on coal to a large degree. Natural gas is also being extracted in the county and throughout the region. That truly is the backbone of Greene County and our industry. Natural resources are our largest industry. We’ve lost $300 million in assessed coal tax revenue since 2010. There is now a significant push to diversify industry, consider what the future could bring, and highlight what makes Greene County unique. We have a lot of land.
Like I said, we are rural, so there are great opportunities to develop land and attract new industry. Because of some of that lost coal tax revenue and some of the mines that have closed down here in Greene County, we now have properties in the county that are known as brownfields. Those are places where coal mining or other industry once operated. They need environmental cleanup, but there are funds to do that. Connie Bloom is in charge of our industrial development authority, and the authority works to clean up those brownfields using available federal and state funds.
That work can create viable land for light or large-scale manufacturing. As we look to diversify industry, I believe we can still lean on some of the natural resources we have within the county. That can support some of the new industries being proposed. Natural gas can be burned in a combined-cycle turbine to generate electricity with one-third fewer emissions than a coal-fired power plant. The electrical grid is taxed, and other states are experiencing brownouts and blackouts. Greene County could extract the gas beneath our feet, attract power plants that operate responsibly, and add electricity to the grid. Instead of exporting all of that resource, we could leverage it here in the county.
What must change to retain young professionals and families in Greene County?
You mentioned losing our young people. We lose a little more than 50% of the students who graduate from our five school districts. It is a beautiful place to live. We just met with the Pennsylvania State Police a couple of months ago, talking about our crime statistics, and Greene County has the lowest crime rate among the neighboring counties.
In the not-too-distant past, and still to a degree now, many people were looking for access to broadband internet. We are a beautiful, rural place to live, but people leave when they cannot get high-speed internet. You can only work remotely if you have high-speed internet. Previous commissioners spent some COVID-19 money, along with federal and state money, to increase broadband development through fiber broadband. A great deal of money went into physical fiber upgrades.
Many people in remote locations in the county are getting satellite internet, and where it would cost millions of dollars to get that fiber connectivity out to them, they can now get it for $100 a month or less. Technology has advanced over the past few years, so people can come here and work remotely, go out on their porch in the morning and not see their neighbors, but see beautiful green space. That may be changing as a barrier for young people who want to stay here.
The larger issue is that they may have no physical place to work. I mentioned we are a coal county. We are in the Pittsburgh region. We have a lot of steel workers who leave Greene County every morning and go to Pittsburgh to work in steel mills. We are a blue-collar workforce here. They go to that community where the opportunities are evident, and they don’t have that commuting time. So they go closer to that opportunity. A recent workforce-barriers study found that 9,200 Greene County residents commute elsewhere for work each day.
People who leave often move only to the next county, remaining in the Pittsburgh region but moving closer to a job. The No. 1 retention priority is bringing opportunities and industry here so our workforce and high school graduates have a reason to stay. More industry and residents would also help attract the amenities people say the county lacks. We have the workforce, but we have to build the opportunities here.
How is the county working with public, private, and educational partners?
Our advocacy begins in the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission region, a 10-county region based in Pittsburgh. We are active in that organization and with the Allegheny Conference. We also work closely with the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance (PRA). We work specifically with them to attract new industry here. We are active members of CCAP, the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. We have multiple conferences and meetings each year, both by Zoom and in person, as we work with other counties to figure out how we attract business back to Pennsylvania.
We’ve seen attrition across Pennsylvania. It is more evident here in Greene County because we’re so small, but the state of Pennsylvania has seen attrition. Industries, businesses, and people have moved to other opportunities. We have been to Washington, D.C., advocating for Greene County, and we will be in Harrisburg next month to lobby legislators. That voice has been missing in Greene County for decades, but we are at a point where we have to have our voice in the room. We have to be at the table. Others in the county and community have said this group of commissioners has made a concerted effort to be true advocates for the county.
Within Greene County, we attend quarterly meetings with township supervisors to understand their needs and identify grants that could support their initiatives. Pennsylvania townships are independent governments, so partnership is essential. We also work with existing coal mines and natural-gas companies, which help match grants and contribute to community organizations.
What are Greene County’s key goals and priorities?
I return to the mission and vision statement we wrote two years ago. A county needs a cohesive mission and vision. The county had been lacking that, and we wanted to create a vision so we can constantly weigh our new objectives against that, to make sure that we are staying in line with where we want to head and that our goals and objectives align with that vision.
The vision for the county is to focus on both large- and small-scale transformational projects while maintaining its rural nature. As we advocate for new industry, life, and growth, we cannot forget where we came from or the fact that this is a beautiful place to live. Development will require a balancing act. We want Greene County to remain green, and we have to be sustainable.
Want more? Read the Invest: Pittsburgh report.
