The Stimulus is working well in LA

[Biggs3535]

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/63228/20100917/american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act-arra-los-angeles-stimulus-wendy-greuel.htm

The Los Angeles City Controller said on Thursday the city's use of its share of the $800 billion federal stimulus fund has been disappointing.

The city received $111 million in stimulus under American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) approved by the Congress more than year ago.

"I'm disappointed that we've only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million," says Wendy Greuel, the city's controller, while releasing an audit report.

"With our local unemployment rate over 12% we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work,” she added.

According to the report, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works generated only 45.46 jobs (the fraction of a job created or retained correlates to the number of actual hours works) after receiving $70.65 million, while the target was 238 jobs.

Similarly, the city’s department of transportation, armed with a $40.8 million fund, created only 9 jobs in place of an expected 26 jobs.

The audit says the numbers were disappointing due to bureaucratic red tape, absence of competitive bidding for projects in private sectors, inappropriate tracking of stimulus money and a laxity in bringing out timely job reports.

“While it doesn’t appear that any of the ARRA funds were misspent, the City needs to do a better job expediting the process and creating jobs,” she said.

To be fair to LA, this kind of thing is happening all over the country.  Too bad nobody could have seen this sort of thing coming...

[dbucfan]

The target was 238 jobs for 70.65 MILLION dollars?  296,848 per job was the goal?  Were they all going to be City Managers?   40.8 million in the second gifting from Obama - with a target of 26 jobs - 1,569,230 per job - what in the world were they doing?  

And the folks in Washington think it is the concepts that are despised - hell - it is the stupidity in the application - they simply don't know what money is or how to flipping use it.

[burger40]

yeah but paul krugman from the New York Times says we need more because the problem with the first stimulus was that it simply wasn't big enough!

Come on dbucfan and Biggs, don't you know the only way to get out of this mess is to spend gads of money as fast as possible! It is the only way!

[jcarruth]

Whats funny/sad is that even at the ridiculous $ per head amounts that are authorised in the stimulus package payouts ($300K - 1 million per job as quoted above) they cant get the money spent ... Lets make it easy, I hereby volunteer to have the City of LA employ me and send me a million dollars ... the money is just sitting there ....

[Skull and Bones]

after reading that I can honestly say I trust our govt. running the health care system.

[dbucfan]

burger40 wrote:

yeah but paul krugman from the New York Times says we need more because the problem with the first stimulus was that it simply wasn't big enough!

Come on dbucfan and Biggs, don't you know the only way to get out of this mess is to spend gads of money as fast as possible! It is the only way!

burger - I do believe that it is possible to stimulate the economy by creating jobs via a stimulus.  However - that is made harder when one forces it through narrow channels of government used to invest are so cluttered with ineptness the money can't get to the intended points of investment.  Then there is the issue of not targeting the money through friends of the administration, and actually getting it to folks who do work and produce - whether bridges, roads or snowmobiles...

Now - the question as to the wisdom of a "stimulus" bill is an entirely different one when you look long term... and would require honesty and business/investment acumen.  And if one looks at the executive and legislative branches of the current goverment - well paucity is a word that springs to mind