October 3, 2009
The Honorable James Oberstar
Chairman
House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
B-376 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515Dear Chairman Oberstar:
I am writing in response to your letter of October 1st, expressing your concern regarding the pace of Massachusetts’ commitment and expenditure of highway funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). While I appreciate your committee’s efforts to continuously monitor the progress of ARRA implementation, I am concerned that the committee’s report reflects an inappropriate “one size fits all” analysis. In addition, your report does not reflect the fact that Massachusetts has consistently been ranked in the top ten among states – and recently as high as 5th – for expenditure of all types of ARRA funds including critical health care and education investments.
The Committee’s report is based on a formula that solely measures the speed with which contracts are put out to bid, awarded, and gotten underway, without drawing any distinction between types of projects and the ultimate economic benefits expected to be derived therefrom. Under this analysis, speed is everything – a state which chooses to dedicate its ARRA funding to simple maintenance and repaving projects is viewed favorably, while a state, such as Massachusetts, that makes the choice to develop more ambitious projects leveraging lasting, long-term job growth rates lower on the committee’s analysis. Our decision to use ARRA transportation funds strategically to support more complicated, long-term economic development investments was influenced in part by the fact that we have significantly increased our own investments with state capital funds in bread and butter transportation infrastructure, including through our own stimulus plan – a $3 billion accelerated bridge program and this year’s record $721 million statewide road and bridge program that together has created jobs in every corner of the Commonwealth.
I believe that Massachusetts has done a fine job in delivering a measured approach to implementing stimulus projects. As you know, there are two congressionally mandated deadlines for ARRA spending of highway funds: states were required to obligate a certain amount of funds in the first 120 days after enactment and are required to obligate the remaining funds no later than the end of February 2010.
In Massachusetts, we were required to obligate approximately $153 million by the end of June 2009. During that timeframe, we delivered 31 projects totaling $187.4 million. This number of projects and this amount of funding exceeds the total programs delivered by some of the states that rank at the highest levels in your report. Because the committee’s analysis ranks states based upon the percentage of highway and bridge funding delivered, no distinction is made between the relative size and scope of a state’s program.
In deciding which projects to implement in the first 120 days, Massachusetts was guided by three main criteria – project readiness, job creation, and geographic equity. We very consciously decided that a balanced approach was called for. The project mix we developed will provide short-term construction jobs in many areas of the Commonwealth, while also leveraging long-term economic development. Included in this list are many resurfacing jobs on major arteries of the Commonwealth; the construction of a new interchange in Fall River and Freetown that will both create long-term job growth and aid in the preservation of ecologically important natural resources; the construction of a new intermodal center in Greenfield; the construction of the Manhan Bike Trail in Northampton; and the expansion of the state’s busiest park-and-ride lot in Newburyport.
Moving forward, we have made a conscious decision to take the time between now and February to develop some projects that may take additional time to deliver, but which will provide greater long-term economic growth to the Commonwealth. The Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development and Executive Office of Transportation have been working cooperatively to identify large scale economic development projects that have been negatively impacted by the national recession, but that could be jump-started with some strategic infrastructure investments. A prime example of this type of project is our proposed use of $15 million of ARRA funding to construct roadway infrastructure for the Assembly on the Mystic project in Somerville. This investment will immediately lead to the construction of a major retail center, as well as open additional sites for millions of square feet of mixed use, smart growth transit-oriented development. Because of its complexity, this investment will take time to deliver, but it is time that is clearly worth the effort. This investment, as well as other similar investments we plan to announce soon, will yield long-term economic growth and their job creation will greatly exceed that which could be accomplished by undertaking simple maintenance and repaving projects.
I fully believe that when the final analysis is done on job creation and economic growth generated by ARRA highway investments, Massachusetts will have a record that we can be proud of and that your committee will wholly endorse. I am confident that this approach is producing jobs for today and jobs for tomorrow.
Thank you for all of your efforts in delivering transportation funding to help the states and the nation realize our shared goal of smart, ecologically friendly, economic development.
Oberstar and the politicians who wrote this law see it as stimulus…getting money to people in order to drag the economy out of the recession. The only way this money is stimulus is if it’s spent fast enough for it to work through the economy
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p>Deval apparently objects to this characterization and is saying the stimulus money is not actually stimulus money, but improvement money. Under that rubric, this money is better spent for quality infrastructure improvements, even if it takes so long to do so that it doesn’t actually…you know, stimulate the economy.
It seems like a good idea to make sure a project is worthwhile before throwing money at it. This reminds me of a sign posted in my local auto mechanic’s shop: “Good, fast, cheap – you can have any two, but not all three!”
The entire idea behind stimulus was “shovel-ready” projects…projects that had been decided to be good on the merits, engineered, surveyed, etc….ready to go in every way but the money. For a project to qualify for TARP funds, we already know that it’s a good use of money because that evaluation would already have been done. Towns in most other states aren’t building bridges to nowhere — they’re building bridges they’ve been ready to build for years. If Deval were spending the money as is legally required, this wouldn’t be a concern.
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p>Either Patrick is doing more diligence than all but one other governor in the country, or he’s trying to blame someone else for his mistakes.
The problem is that most other states in the country are building new roads. MA is in a different situation — we don’t have significant growth, we do have mass transit, and we have the political foresight to work toward changing the way we move people around to something more sustainable.
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p>The problem is that the shovel ready projects were designed 5, 10, or even 20 years ago… when 2 of those 3 things weren’t true. I think Deval Patrick is trying to slow the spending down to try and find projects which benefit MA of today, not the MA of 10 years ago — and with the smart growth philosophies of today, not the mo’bigger road philosophy of the 20th century.
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p>At least I hope that’s what he’s up to.
I’ve lived here for 35 years, after moving here from Montgomery County, MD (where I grew up) in 1974.
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p>I have always been struck by the absence of effective regional planning in this area. While our fierce New England local autonomy and independence provides many benefits, I wonder if it lies at the root of what we struggle with today.
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p>In order for “shovel-ready” projects to be ready at any scale larger than repaving various intersections, there must be years of planning ahead of time. We don’t do that here.
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p>The entire Maryland/Virginia/DC region was debating Metro routes, extents, and stops decades before ground was broken. Today, the “Inter-County Connector” project is underway. From the “background” page (emphasis mine):
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p>I hope that I’m mistaken or uninformed about this, but I have the impression that no analogous planning like this is taking place at all in Massachusetts. I strongly suspect that such planning was an early victim of our tax-cutting back in the prop 2 1/2 days of the early 1980s.
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p>Massachusetts has 351 cities and towns — and essentially no regional planning. We gutted and essentially dismantled the “county” level of government in an earlier round of “small-government” populism.
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p>I agree with stomv that some of our more enlightened leaders have the “political foresight to work toward changing the way we move people around to something more sustainable.”
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p>I wonder if we are beginning to realize just how fundamental a change this is going be for our local culture.
I read his response as saying he’s focusing on long term job creation as well as short term. There’s a legitimate trade-off between short term jobs now and long term jobs later.
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p>True, long term jobs later won’t stimulate the economy now. But we will need the jobs later.
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p>Also, the letter tracked only highway funds. I don’t know why they are singled out. According to Patrick, if you count all stimulus funds together, he’s on time.
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p>Revenue is down, more 9C cuts are on the way. More people are going to lose their jobs and their houses and when they do, there will be fewer services to support them.
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p>The point of the stimulus money was to stimulate the economy, the point of the transportation stimulus money was to stimulate job growth in jobs related to transportation.
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p>It was ditch digger money – we don’t need ditches, we don’t need them filled back in, but we’ve got 8-9% of the population with shovels who aren’t making any money – if they dig ditches and fill them back in they get money, they pay their mortgage and buy food and clothes.
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p>If we’re not handing out the money to the ditch diggers, we’re not spending the money correctly. It doesn’t matter if we’ll use it to build a canal in 2 years that will make the diggers lives better in 2 years, we’ve got ditch diggers out of work today.
put us ahead of the curve in job creation. We are creating jobs now but we are also getting bids on longer term projects, while still out performing other states. Kind of difficult to argue against.
First, as I remember, the two criteria Obama set for spending the stimulus money was: fast and thrifty. So speed is a key criteria that the Patrick Administration should be held accountable for.
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p>But we’ll all just have to wait and see if all the stimulus money is targeted by February, as required, and will be spent by the September 2010 deadline. If not, Patrick’s tough reelection campaign gets tougher.
If the idea is to just throw money away, send it here. This is another example of fool congressmen without any understanding outside of getting elected thinking themselves experts in any field of endeavor. Maybe with a little planning and project management Bridge 9340 would be standing.
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p>A round of applause to the governor.
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p>“Politicians say they’re beefing up our economy. Most don’t know beef from pork.” ~Harold Lowman
It did not surprise me that a Washington spendthrift made the accusation. This stimilus money ( so called) is money that doesn’t even exist. it is manufactured, “make beleive” money that is being added to the national debt when we are drowning in red ink—not that many Americans are even aware of that fact. But—they will—sooner rather than later.
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p>Think the economy is in the tank? Wait til February.
reasonable to me. He doesn’t seem like he’s blowing smoke. My guess is that Oberstar’s letter is pro forma, not a matter of a Washingtonian pissing away money.
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p>As Sabutai suggests, the federal and state governments have slightly different objectives. Other than required by law, Massachusetts has no incentive to do what the federal government wants.
the Fed is providing the money, and they want it spent pronto. Since most individual states have a very small impact on the national economy, they’re likely to see things a bit differently… and want to spend the Fed’s money a bit differently.
We’ve got some 430 million to spend on transportation right in the middle of transportation reform
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p>I can’t think of an easier way to waste most of that money than to throw it at transportation before reform is complete and final administrative oversight isn’t in place.