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September 28, 2009

Mega projects tilt stimulus spending

By Dan Linehan

MANKATO — Enough stimulus money will be doled out in Nicollet County to give a 37-inch high-definition television to every man, woman and child. In Martin County, each person could barely afford a digital converter box.

Of course, the stimulus isn’t about passing out consumer electronics, but this summer’s federal largesse is being spent in large chunks that are benefiting some counties more than others.

In Nicollet County, a $16.5 million project will rebuild Highway 169 and its utilities. Taken along with the other stimulus projects in the county announced through July 20, the per-capita spending comes to $552.

In Faribault County, there’s a $4 million Highway 90 project that bumps their per-capita amount to $316.

But in Martin County, the only non-automatic stimulus grant was $63,000 for a bus network with five nearby counties. The per-capita spending is $43.

“It isn’t without trying,” Martin County Coordinator Scott Higgins said. He said the county is “rarin’ to get that money” and is pursuing other grant programs.

The data come from ProPublica.org, a nonprofit online newsroom that created a database to track stimulus spending by state and county. Of the nine area counties, four are receiving $180 per capita or more from the stimulus. The final five are getting less than $90 per capita.

This spending tracks only the portion of the stimulus spent on projects.

Sara Severs, a spokeswoman for Congressman Tim Walz, said nearly 40 percent of the recovery act was spent on tax cuts. The typical taxpayer will see a reduction of between $14 and $18 per week.

The goal of the stimulus wasn’t to make sure that projects were spaced evenly.

“The goal is to get the projects that are ready to go and can get off the ground as quickly as possible,” she said.

Walz’s office released a guidebook to the recovery act this spring to help local governments apply for the money.

But even in mega projects such as St. Peter’s, most of the money doesn’t stay in Nicollet County.

Shafer Construction, based in Shafer, expects to have 150 workers in total on the Highway 169 project. They’re all working 80-hour weeks and are presumably spending some of that overtime pay on local motels and local food.

But only about a half-dozen of the workers are from this area. And the project is being designed by a Minnetonka firm, RLK Inc.

Meanwhile, some smaller counties have no stimulus road projects.

Watonwan County had no “shovel-ready” projects — a term used by President Barack Obama referring to projects already designed with permits in hand.

The shovel-ready deadline came too soon for Watonwan County to apply for anything, Public Works Director Roger Risser said. Environmental permit rules weren’t relaxed for stimulus projects, he said. It can take months for various government agencies to give counties the go-ahead for road work.

And even when Watonwan County received money, it hardly swelled their coffers.

“A lot, basically, of the stimulus backfilled some state unallotments, so it’s not like it’s some new money,” County Coordinator Rich Collins said.

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