I will be joining Governor Beebe, Senator Pryor, Congressman Womack and Fort Smith area officials at the unveiling of a 5-year strategic plan of the Fort Smith Regional Alliance later this morning.

This 8-county plan is aimed at bring economic development and jobs to Crawford, Franklin, Johnson, Logan, Sebastian and Scott counties in Arkansas; as well as Le Flore and Sequoyah counties in Oklahoma. 

Similar regional development alliances in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas have shown to be effective, so today's announcement holds a great deal of promise for the Fort Smith area.

The event begins 11:30 a.m. today at the Reynolds Room of the campus center at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.

You can read more about it in this story from Talk Business.