Here is the link. I am quite impressed with, say, what the Mayor of Brockton has in the stimulus pipeline – but as this is but a brief break during the work day for me, I look forward to what you all find here:
Please share widely!
Stimulus Watch – where the money is going in detail
…the White House has set up http://www.recovery.gov, which I believe serves the same purpose, but also has a way for the public to contact the administration if they see money being misused.
not actually “where the money is going in detail,” which I guess remains to be seen.
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p>This is just a partial wish list from some mayors (which excludes all the towns in the Commonwealth, some of which are bigger than some cities).
Bob, I’m not sure I agree with your promotion comment. Even in the high-tech green knowledge economy of the future, yada yada yada, we will still need roads, bridges, utilities, and so forth, and our physical infrastructure is in dire need of repair and improvement. The key question is not whether we should fix it, but instead whether we’ll invest in physical infrastructure that makes sense, like rail upgrades, bridge repair, nuclear, wind, and solar power, etc., and not in new highways to the exburbs of the future or new coal-fired power plants.
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p>TedF
to the extent that the government can spend money to stimulate the economy, doesn’t it make sense that they spend it on things they “own”? things that require–and badly need–their investment anyway?
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p>we get a little too much shaved off the top for profit and a little less to show for it down the road when we buy “service” as opposed to roads.
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p>nice use of counter-lingo, though bob.
You could say the same thing about any project, roads or service. If the theory of stimulus truly worked though, then the profit would get spent somewhere else, and go on to stimulate and so on and so on.
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p>If you look at the list of programs, it’s hard to believe that anybody who voted on the bill actually believes in the theory. The theory is just for editorial writers.
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p>Keyboard vs shovel is a way for interest groups to fight over the scraps.
“Shovel-ready” projects are fine. I agree we need roads. But they shouldn’t be the exclusive focus of a modern stimulus program. Any investment that gets money flowing back into the economy can have a stimulative effect because it puts people back to work — at their shovels, or at their keyboards. The question is, which is a better long term investment i.e. which has a greater economic multiplier effect over time. Knowledge-based businesses arguably have a greater multiplier. At least, that has been the judgment of the market since WWII, roughly speaking, which is why the US has moved from manufacturing to services (and that is not a shift, incidentally, that will be reversed any time soon and certainly not through a $500 billion spending program). That is why knowledge-heavy Massachusetts has a higher per capita income than shovel-heavy Michigan, I think.
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p>Anyway, all I am saying is that if shovels are funded to the exclusion of keyboards, we may find ourselves 18 months from now with a lot of repaved roads but no continuing employment. Whereas an investment program that includes research centers, new materials construction facilities, biotech manufacturing, genetic engineering and so on — the places where future jobs will come from — might leave us better positioned for the requirements of the global economy, which will still be with us after the current $500 billion stimulus is spent.
Don’t think of them to roads to the exburbs, but roads leading to Boston.
For white collar fraudsters on Wall Street?
That site does not show a complete list. I know that Springfield submitted capital expenditure requests to close to a billion dollars, nothing shows on that list.
I was wondering about projects that are not showing on the list. Have they already been “cut” by preliminary review of the task force or in purgatory somewhere else?
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p>Towns are at a complete disadvantage (as noted by Trickle up above) without planners and personnel to design and submit the required applications in the brief window of time offered by the Administration.
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p>I would argue that there is a structural inequity in the stimulus proposals without a geographic, socio-economic, rural-urban needs analysis framework in place before approval of anything shovel-ready or cyber-ready.
It’s not connected, yet, to the stimulus or the federal government.
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p>Small towns may be at a disadvantage (although here in Mass. regional planning and transit agencies take up at least some of the slack) but just because towns (and many cities) are not included in this very partial list does not mean anything as far as I can see.
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p>Do I have it wrong? Go read the boilerplate and see what you think it means.
The state website has a more comprehensive list; those veted by the task force (mostly state projects) and those projects submitted by municipalities that have not been reviewed. I’ll be keeping my eyes on MA
This week the Federal Government has already released $594M to MA for Medicaid assistance and another $345M from HUD, yet the MA website still has merely the process used to review projects and the lond “wish” list of those under consideration. With nearly a billion dollars in the pipeline, we deserve to know where (and when) it is going.