How much would you pay for a company to take apart one desk and put together and ship two more?
The federal government used stimulus funds to pay a Baltimore company $840 to do the job for an office in Reston.
Though a tiny fraction of the $787 billion stimulus pie, critics say it is one of many examples of how tax dollars aren’t being spent on the most useful projects.
“It’s only $840 but you see examples like this and you can’t think that this is the stimulus people had in mind when they supported this thing going through,” said Dan Holler, deputy director of Senate relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Holler said the public expected a stimulus that would fund “massive” transportation and energy infrastructure projects and not “quirky” projects of questionable value that won’t produce many, if any, jobs.
Critics say there are plenty of other questionable projects around the region that have been approved or are pending approval, including:
¥ $500,000 to hire an “urban forester auditor” and three apprentices who will “interface with residents and increase awareness about the importance of trees in the District,” according to city records.
¥ Another $500,000 to give $1,200 subsidies to District residents who install rain barrels, plant shade trees, and other activities to reduce runoff.
¥ $250,000 to install or upgrade traffic signs in Montgomery County with “fluorescent microprismatic” sheeting.
¥ $350,000 to buy new dispatch software for Montgomery’s Ride On bus system.
¥ $1.75 million for 48 new energy-efficient garage doors at the District’s fire stations.
¥ $4.3 million to install “green” roofs at 12 District fire stations.
Local officials are quick to defend their stimulus-funded projects as proper uses of federal money that will improve the region’s infrastructure, help the environment, and create and save a large number of jobs.
“The Obama administration’s commitment to providing recovery funds to state and local governments is paying off,” Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said. “And Montgomery County is grateful to be a beneficiary.”
Alan Heymann, spokesman for the District’s Department of the Environment, said stimulus funding that prevents runoff and promotes trees will improve the city’s drinking water and train people for the growing number of “green” jobs.
“Anything we can do to jump-start that field, we’re going to do it,” he said.
But waves of new jobs, green or otherwise, haven’t materialized, and unemployment rates around the region are at their highest levels in years.
In Montgomery County, home to the nation’s first stimulus-funded transportation project when contractors started repaving a one-mile stretch of New Hampshire Avenue in March, unemployment is at 5.7 percent, its highest level in at least 20 years. The county government is weighing layoffs and furloughs of its employees to cope with a worsening financial outlook.
But county officials said the stimulus funding has allowed Montgomery to save hundreds of jobs, including 442 teachers. And more jobs will be saved or created when the county gets more stimulus money, said Kathleen Boucher, assistance chief administrative officer.
As of its latest reporting three weeks ago, the federal government has disbursed about $70 billion, or about 9 percent of the stimulus, according to the federal government’s Web site. President Barack Obama said the slow going was because he wanted to make sure his administration “did our homework and invested our tax dollars only in those projects that actually created jobs and jump-started our economy.”
But critics said the inefficiency of government make it inevitable that wasteful projects will be funded.
“No matter how slowly you roll this out, you can’t oversee a $1 trillion without this stuff sneaking in,” Holler said.
