While Republicans have trouble understanding that a stimulus includes spending, Democrats in New York are trying to figure out what needs to get done as there is a whole list of projects that are ready to get under way. By the latest count, there are 1,900 separate infrastructure or infrastructure-related "shovel-ready" items that have been requested by various officials from Buffalo to Albany and Watertown to Long Island. The question though, is how does it all get done once Obama signs the bill?
From The Ithaca Journal:
I certainly hope he does. Knowing how things operate (or don't operate) in New York, a lot of that money can easily be mismanaged or simply disappear. Of course, after watching the TARP funds disappear, I don't necessarily trust Congress to watch the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act money either. Somehow though, there has to be a transparent system to watch these funds so that jobs are actually created and infrastructure built and not just mountains of empty rhetoric.
State lawmakers and watchdog groups said they have gotten little indication from Paterson's office on how the billions in federal aid for infrastructure projects would be prioritized and which areas of the state would benefit the most.
"The comptroller's office and the governor should design a way to monitor the spending," said Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "The last thing we want this to be is about pork and not about stimulus."
Horner said New York needs to develop a transparent system to avoid the stimulus money becoming a "lobbyist feeding frenzy."
Erin Duggan, a Paterson spokeswoman, said the governor plans to announce the process for distributing the money later this week, after the U.S. Senate acts on the bill.
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