Stimulus-sign critic backed other namings

February 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS (AP) — An Ohio state senator who’s leading a charge to ban road signs touting stimulus spending has routinely supported memorial highway and bridge namings also paid for with tax dollars, the latest twist in the battle over whether road signs classify as government waste in Ohio.

State Sen. Tim Grendell’s charge to ban stimulus signs that he and fellow conservatives call self-promotion for the Obama administration has caught the attention of the national Tea Party movement.

A review of state legislative records by The Associated Press found that Grendell, a Republican from suburban Cleveland, has routinely supported memorial highway and bridge namings that, like stimulus signs, are paid for with tax dollars. Among honorees are a longtime dirt racing executive and Ohio sausage king Bob Evans.

Records show Grendell has co-sponsored nine bills backing the honorary naming of 74 highway segments or bridges since he joined the Legislature in 2001.

The most recent naming bill was passed this month, shortly after Grendell’s proposal to ban stimulus-funded signs in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project areas gained national media attention and the ear of former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. It included 17 new namings, one in Grendell’s northeast Ohio district.

Grendell blasted any attempt to compare the two. He said the highway and bridge namings he’s supported are overwhelmingly for soldiers or state troopers killed in the line of duty and that Americans widely support such use of their tax dollars.

“Anybody who can’t see the difference between wasting large amounts of taxpayer money on a political message thanking the Obama administration for giving us back our tax dollars to pay for our roads and spending a much smaller amount honoring our war veterans lacks the lacks the faculties required to understand the political issues of our day,” he said.

Not all the memorial signs Grendell has supported have honored veterans and troopers, however.

They’ve honored Evans, founder of Bob Evans Restaurants, longtime Eldora Speedway owner Earl Baltes, former governors and state lawmakers, doctors and a pair of wealthy benefactors behind Ohio’s University of Rio Grande.

Grendell’s calculation that the state has spent $1 million of its stimulus money on the signs has been cited since last fall. Most recently, Palin quoted the figure in her Feb. 6 keynote speech at the Tea Party Convention as an example of government waste.

But Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Varner said he can’t confirm the accuracy of the number.

Varner said the exact amount being spent on stimulus signs is impossible to determine because the cost is embedded in the overall price tag for each project. But he said Grendell’s estimate likely overblows the cost by using a high-end estimate of $3,000 for each sign, assuming two signs per work zone, and applying that $6,000 cost to every one of Ohio’s stimulus road projects. He said some projects do include two signs, but some have one or none.

If Grendell’s same mathematical assumptions are applied to the memorial namings he’s supported, the cost to taxpayers has been $342,000 so far and will rise to $444,000 when signs are erected for the highway segments and bridge approved last week.