Stimulus bill lacks strong enough jolt to meet wish lists of Ohio communities

The state could receive $9 billion in stimulus funding, Sen. Sherrod Brown has said.

COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Ohio mayors say they can put nearly 100,000 people to work in the next two years on projects ranging from changing light bulbs to digging swimming pools. They just need a few billion dollars from the $827 billion economic-stimulus package that could win Senate approval as soon as Tuesday.

The only problem is the total cost of “wish lists” in Ohio and across the country far outstrips the money likely to be available for job-creating, economy-stimulating projects.

Most of the stimulus money will be reserved for shoring up state budgets and Medicaid shortfalls.

The mayors’ national advocacy group says its projects provide immediate jobs, reduce pollution and improve the quality of life in their communities.

As Congress debates how best to stimulate the economy, mayors across the country have compiled a list of 18,750 projects that they say are ready to go. They need only money and workers.

They are scurrying about Washington, D.C., spreading the word: “We have the municipal mechanism to create new jobs,” said Elena Temple, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for mayors of cities with 30,000 or more people.

The mayors say they could put 1.6 million Americans to work with $150 billion. (The U.S. has lost 3.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.)

In Ohio, the mayors of more than two dozen cities have a wish list of 847 projects with a $4.2 billion price tag.

That list doesn’t include Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s demolition of the City Center mall but does include a proposed light-rail line from Polaris to Downtown.

“The point of this list is to show how fast and how many jobs could be created,” Temple said. “We can produce a significant number of jobs with our public-works projects.”

Akron wants $1 billion to fund 236 projects that it says could create more than 5,100 jobs. About half those jobs would involve renovating city buildings to make them energy efficient, and working on water, sewer and road projects in industrial areas.

Columbus’ proposal for a $200 million light-rail system would create 20,300 jobs, according to the city; that’s the most of any proposed Ohio project.

But to add 761 jobs in the city of Lorain in northern Ohio, taxpayers would fork over $463,000 per job; that’s the priciest plan on the Ohio mayors’ wish list. Lorain wants wind turbines and more police officers, to name a couple of its proposals.

The city of Stow offers the most economical proposal. Leaders in the Summit County city northeast of Akron want $4.9 million to extend a road, plus water and sewer lines, to a proposed hospital. The project would create 6,825 jobs at a cost of $718 per job, the city estimates.

Stow and every other city, township and county in Ohio will compete with the state and its undisclosed wish list for a comparatively small pot.

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown estimated last week that Ohio could receive in the neighborhood of $9 billion. That includes about $2.3 billion for the federal share of Medicaid, the state-federal health-care program for the poor; $2.4 billion for the state-budget stabilization fund to help stave off cuts in areas such as health care and education; and $1.4 billion for public-school modernization, special-education and disadvantaged-students programs.

Ohio’s amount for infrastructure, from which most of the mayors’ wish lists would draw, is about $1.4 billion: $914.6 million for road and bridge repairs, $282.9 million for water and sewer projects and $203 million for mass transit.

That infrastructure pot would have to be shared by everyone in the state: the governor, the Ohio Department of Transportation, county commissioners, mayors, and anyone else who has an eye on the stimulus pot.

So, for example, for Coleman to pull in enough federal stimulus money to pay for the light-rail project, he would have to snare all the mass-transit money sent to Ohio.

Nothing in either the House or Senate versions of the bill sets aside money for demolition of City Center. Lawmakers and the Obama administration insist that there will be no earmarks for individual projects in the bill.

Regardless of the final package, Brown said that mayors realize there is not enough money to fund everyone’s wish list. Not even close.

“Mayors are smart enough to know it will not take care of all the problems we face,” Brown said.

Gov. Ted Strickland last month appointed Ronald B. Richard, president and chief executive officer of the Cleveland Foundation, to develop a plan to disburse the state’s stimulus money. It’s a work in progress.

But Strickland has indicated to some members of Ohio’s congressional delegation that a competitive grant process, similar to one used by the federal government, will determine who gets what. The state has not compiled a list of potential projects.

That leaves the mayors’ list as the only glimpse into what leaders think will nudge the economy forward.

Road and water projects make up more than half of Ohio mayors’ wish lists. An additional 20 percent are for community-development projects. Among the proposals:

U$3.5 million for Dayton to restore a historic structure “associated with the Wright brothers.”

U$2.3 million for Cincinnati to renovate a swimming pool and create a streetscape in Over-the-Rhine, an urban neighborhood known for its poverty and crime.

U$500,000 for trees in Lima.

U$200,000 to replace a generator at Marion’s City Hall.

U$70,000 to replace the roof on the dog pound in Euclid.

If history can be trusted, it shows that small, local projects stimulate the economy, said Robert Leighninger, a professor at Arizona State University who has written books on the Public Works Administration, one of the programs created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat the Great Depression.