So, the Fed is spending big bucks in the effort to restart our troubled economy, but how well is that money being spent here in Mass.? According to MassPIRG, a non-profit group that works on behalf of Bay State residents, the state is doing pretty good. The money is primarily being spent to fix up the state’s infrastructure.
Also interesting is the fact that 19 percent of the funds are going for non-auto related projects. That’s higher than the national average. That’s somewhat good news considering the state has dropped this year in its ranking of bicycle friendly states.
Here’s the latest from the State House News Service:
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, JUNE 29, 2009…..Massachusetts has “done a relatively better job than most other states at spending flexible stimulus funds that will generate” nearly 5,000 new jobs but has “clearly room for improvement,” according to a consumer advocacy group’s analysis.
The report, released Monday afternoon, praised the state for prioritizing maintenance and repair rather than new construction, with 75 percent of the $438 million apportioned to the state paying for existing infrastructure, higher than the 67 percent national average.
“Massachusetts’s choices about which projects to support with its largest and most flexible source of transportation funding shows that the commonwealth is generally doing a good job at using those funds to make progress,” according to the MassPIRG study.
The group found that 19 percent of the Massachusetts funds would go to projects that do not entail automobiles, meaning public transportation and walking and biking projects. Other states average 3.1 percent.
Monday marks the deadline for states to commit at least half of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s $26.6 billion for transportation spending. Only Delaware, Colorado, Iowa and Oregon spent a higher percentage of their funds on transit projects than Massachusetts.
“The state could use a larger portion of … funds for public transit and non-motorized transportation, particularly in a state where new and wider highways are not really an option,” the MassPIRG authors wrote. “With so little population growth and no unincorporated land, it is arguable that all of the commonwealth’s discretionary spending should have been used on system preservation, transit, and non-motorized transportation projects. We hope that the second tranche of spending will show even better performance.”
