Stimulus Money Mired in Red Tape
Bureaucracy has kept job-creating federal stimulus money in the bank and projects on the shelf.
Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus bill more than a year ago that sponsors promised would almost immediately help create or save jobs. As unemployment rose and the economy faltered, critics derided the stimulus as a wasteful boondoggle that failed to help the economy.
So it was noteworthy when The Pilot’s Mike Saewitz recently reported that a Chesapeake city audit indicated only 4 percent of $12 million in stimulus money awarded to the city was spent in 2009.
So far, only two jobs have been created in Chesapeake, Saewitz reported.
Audits have not been done in the region’s other cities, yet the results would have been similar. Norfolk, for instance, has spent just $836,000 out of $15.3 million. Most of the money allocated to Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Suffolk is also un spent, including funds to end homelessness, hire new police officers and make city buildings more energy efficient.
On its own, that makes the stimulus package look ineffective. But, in fact, tens of millions more stimulus dollars have been poured directly into local schools, housing authorities, agencies and universities, saving or creating hundreds of jobs.
Stimulus money spared some Hampton Roads school systems difficult budget cuts last year that could have led to layoffs. Norfolk’s housing authority has hired contractors to upgrade several public housing projects.
However, the money provided directly to cities is another, more frustrating story.
Federal bureaucracy is a cumbersome thing. And the mechanisms created by the stimulus bill to assess applications and transfer money – designed to weed out bad projects and to prevent fraud – have delayed spending on local projects for months, local officials say.
City officials were forced to expend too much time and energy to qualify for stimulus funding, and that’s unacceptable. Multiply that bureaucratic inertia across the country, to the thousands of cities and counties that applied for stimulus dollars, and you get a feel for why so much stimulus money remains unspent.
That money is only now finally beginning to create jobs as work begins on local construction projects.
Virginia Beach has three road projects that will consume $36 million. The widening of Witchduck Road is under way. The widening of Princess Anne Road to the city’s municipal center and the reconstruction of ramps along Interstate 264 at Great Neck Road should begin later this year.
In Portsmouth, construction of the $19 million Simonsdale Elementary School began recently, with contractors pouring cement footings. Norfolk and Chesapeake will begin resurfacing more than 100 miles of pothole-riddled streets this summer, from Great Bridge to Ocean View. Norfolk and Chesapeake will also repair bridges.
Whatever you think of the stimulus package, the Chesapeake audit doesn’t mean that money is being wasted or that it won’t create jobs. It just confirms the old axiom that government bureaucracy can get in the way of progress.
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