Funding shorts some high-jobless regions

SAINT MARYS, Pa. (AP) — Wendy Cameron has heard President Barack Obama’s promise that his $787 billion stimulus plan will create jobs, but the 50-year-old laid-off factory worker still can’t get a paycheck in her north central Pennsylvania town.

With each passing week, millions of dollars in new transportation projects are announced in the country, all paid for with stimulus money. But so far, Elk County, with its 13.8 percent unemployment rate hasn’t seen any of it.

Instead, an Associated Press analysis of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects shows that the recovery plan shortchanges Elk County and others like it that need jobs the most. The AP review found that states are planning to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than it will in communities with the highest.

One result among many: While Elk County is passed over for road money despite its climbing unemployment rate, the military and college community of Riley County, Kan., with its 3.4 percent unemployment, will benefit from about $56 million to build a highway, improve an intersection and restore a historic farmhouse.

That’s a stimulus program that Cameron and others without jobs just don’t understand.

“Why are they helping them?” asked Cameron, who said she’d gladly take road work while she trains for a new career in nursing. “They’re not in need. We are.

“What are these people going to do? Is everybody going to go on welfare? I’ve never been on welfare. I don’t want to be on welfare.”

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday that the AP’s findings don’t mean that the neediest communities will not benefit from transportation projects funded in other regions.

“Just because a road project is in one part of one county doesn’t mean the benefits of those jobs created or the economic impact of that spending is simply isolated to that one area,” he said.

The AP reviewed $18.9 billion in projects, the most complete picture available of where states plan to spend the first wave of highway money. The projects account for about half of the money set aside for states and local governments to spend on roads, bridges and infrastructure in the stimulus plan.

The analysis considered the earliest projects announced nationwide, the ones most likely to break ground and create jobs first. More projects are continually being announced, and some areas that received little or no help so far may benefit later. The Obama administration could also encourage states to change their plans.

To determine whether there was a disparity in where the money would go, the AP divided the nation’s counties into four groups by unemployment levels. The analysis found that, no matter how the early money is measured, communities suffering most fare the worst:

U High-unemployment counties, those in the top quarter of jobless rates, are allotted about 16 percent of the money, compared with about 20 percent for areas least affected by joblessness.

UIn low-unemployment counties nationwide, those in the bottom quarter of jobless rates, the federal government is spending about $89 a person compared with $59 a person in the worst-hit areas.

UIn counties with the largest populations, the government is spending about $69 a person in areas with the lowest unemployment and $40 a person in places with the greatest job need.

UCounties with the highest unemployment are most likely to have been passed over completely in the early spending.

Among them: Wheeler County, Ore.; Steuben County, Ind.; Macon County, Ga.; and Crowley County, Colo.

Many others are getting minimal help in this round: Vermillion County, Ind.; Lapeer County, Mich.; Presidio County, Texas; Tallahatchi County, Miss.

The analysis points out problems with the way the administration has represented stimulus spending and its effect on areas hardest hit by unemployment, congressional leaders said Monday.

“To some extent I think the administration oversold the transportation aspect of this,” said Jim Berard, spokesman for Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “It was sold as the heart and soul of the package, and it really just isn’t.”

The very promise that Obama made, to spend money quickly and create jobs, is locking out many struggling communities needing those jobs.

The money goes to projects ready to start. But many struggling communities don’t have projects waiting. They couldn’t afford the millions of dollars for preparation and plans that often is required.

“It’s not fair,” said Martin Schuller, the borough manager in the Elk County seat of Ridgway, who commiserates about the inequity in highway aid with colleagues in nearby towns. “It’s a joke because we’re not going to get it, because we don’t have any projects ready to go.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood defended the transportation stimulus plan Monday. Even if needy areas don’t see transportation projects this year, workers can still travel for jobs elsewhere, he said.

“When it’s all said and done, you’re going to see an enormous number of people working on these projects this summer,” LaHood said.

Republican Rep. Glenn Thompson, whose district includes Elk County, was not convinced.

“Tell that to people in Elk County living with double-digit-and-climbing unemployment,” he said. “The stimulus had a cookie-cutter formula and I don’t think it took into account the most severe needs.”

Traveling for jobs is difficult in areas where leaving counties requires a two-hour drive. Or for anyone who can’t afford to make that trip, said Nancy Hetrick, a volunteer Salvation Army caseworker who works with the needy in Elk County.

“If they have cars they’ll go, but a lot of people don’t have cars. A lot of them can’t afford to have cars on the road right now,” Hetrick said. “Elk County can stand to use this job right here in the county itself.”

The early trend seen in the AP analysis runs counter to expectations raised by Obama, that road and infrastructure money from the historic $787 billion stimulus plan would create jobs in areas most devastated by layoffs. Transportation money, he said, would mean paychecks for “folks looking for work” and “folks who want to work.”

“That’s the core of my plan, putting people to work doing the work that America needs done,” Obama said in a Feb. 11 speech promoting transportation spending as a way to expand employment.

Also, Congress required states to use some of the highway money for projects in economically distressed areas, but didn’t impose sanctions if they didn’t. States can lose money, however, if they don’t spend fast enough.

Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery effort, said Monday that transportation money is only part of a stimulus package that will benefit “as many Americans as possible.”

“Different programs under the Recovery Act are targeted differently, and looking at them in isolation is misleading and incomplete,” she said.

Joel Szabat, who also oversees the stimulus for the Transportation Department, said the agency presses states to build projects in struggling areas but does not normally consider how much money is going to each county.

Presented with AP’s findings, he said: “I will be going back to ask our folks to do this kind of analysis, the overall amount for the projects.”

Obama’s stimulus package sends $38 billion to states and local governments for roads, bridges, transit and other infrastructure, about 5 percent of the overall program that also includes money for, among other things, schools, community development, technology, worker training and tax breaks.

All counties will receive some stimulus relief eventually. But the haste voiced by the White House is not reflected in the flow of highway money so far.

“We cannot wait,” Vice President Joe Biden said last week when announcing a $30 million transit project in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., where the 7.7 percent unemployment rate remains below the national average. “We’re spending a lot of time and money. Why? It’s about ... jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. That’s why we cannot wait.”

Yet residents of Perry County, Tenn., will have to wait. County Mayor John Carroll said he’s disappointed his community, which suffers from 25.4 percent unemployment, won’t receive a dime any time soon for its road needs.

“It’s pretty easy to draw a connection between the high unemployment rate and the lack of any four-lane highways,” he said.

Federal auditors acknowledge they can’t yet track the transportation money that is leaving Washington and there is no single list of the thousands of projects planned in each state. For its analysis, the AP used lists of projects approved through March by the Transportation Department and collected lists of stimulus projects that have been announced in 49 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Federal officials have approved 2,800 projects. The remaining projects on the AP list represent the states’ official plans for the money. Only Virginia, which has not announced its plan, is not included.

As the number of projects grows, places like Elk County could still be left out because they could not afford the upfront costs needed to put proposals in the pipeline.

“It’s all based on this ’shovel readiness,”’ said Elk County Commissioner Daniel Freeburg. “That’s been our stumbling block.”

Elk County surely could use jobs. The once thriving north central Pennsylvania county is home to metal factories that equip the nation’s auto industry. Layoffs are mounting.

Freeburg is pinning hopes on getting future stimulus money, such as for energy conservation programs, that will create jobs and rekindle the local metal and lumber industries. The county’s workers will survive, just as generations of pioneers here have when times got hard.

When timber and carpentry no longer sustained the community, residents turned to processing powdered metal for automobile plants, first in shops behind their homes and later in factories dotting the outskirts of towns.

“When times get bad, they open up a plant in their garage and they develop a new product. That’s the spirit of Elk County, it really is. That’s what carried us,” Freeburg said. “Times are bad. Absolutely. Unemployment? It’s a shame. But there are no doubts we’re going to rebound.”

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On the Net:

Interactive tracking stimulus money on a map: http://tinyurl.com/orulga