I’ve been getting lots of emails lately announcing pots of federal stimulus money coming into Massachusetts for various purposes. Here’s an example that arrived this morning (email, no link):
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced nearly $22 million in funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in Massachusetts. Under DOE’s State Energy Program, Massachusetts proposed a statewide plan that prioritizes energy savings, creates or retains jobs, increases the use of renewable energy, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
So I thought it might be useful to see how we’re doing overall. The results look pretty good.
The numbers, all from the state-by-state page at the federal Recovery.gov website, are broken down into three categories: $ Announced, $ Made Available, and $ Paid Out. The site explains that the three categories are:
what the federal agencies announced they were giving to your state; what the agencies currently have made available for projects; and the amount the agencies have paid out to your state.
MA’s numbers, in that order, are (roughly): $5.6 billion, $3.8 billion, and $1.4 billion.
For actual “stimulus” purposes, the key number is the last one — $ Paid Out — since that tells us how many dollars have arrived in Massachusetts to put people to work. And it speaks well of the MA stimulus operation that, of the $3.8 billion announced as “available” by federal agencies, about 37% has actually made it to MA. That compares quite favorably to other states both regionally and nationally: the ratios of $ Paid Out to $ Made Available in other New England states are:
CT: 28%
ME: 35%
NH: 13%
RI: 32%
VT: 26%
The NY ratio is 28%, PA is also 28%, FL is 23%, and TX is a sorry 21%. Only a few states are doing better than us — I spotted IL at 39%, WI at 41%, and CA at an impressive 49% (and God knows they need it). (The chart shows WY’s ratio at 100%; that’s possible, but it seems unlikely.)
What does this tell us? First, it tells us that the Governor’s recovery office is doing a good job having projects ready when the feds make money available.
