Tag Archives: Freeways

Roads jobs — more important than most, state says

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The state is going to slash and burn jobs over the next two years, under legislation to be considered next week. State government would be cut by $125 million over the next two years, but highway workers would be exempted from threats to their jobs, as would those with public safety gigs, such as cops or firefighters.

Oh, yeah. The first $300 million in federal stimulus money would go to highway projects.

So still no way to connect jobs to workers without cars, but plenty of cops to roust and bust them if they become homeless.

Or are they all supposed to find jobs as road builders?

Transit $ added to stimulus; still swamped by highway spending

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The House of Representatives added $3 billion for transit spending on its way to passing the stimulus bill yesterday. raising the total to $12 billion.

That’s good news. Still, highway building gets $30 billion and it will be pumped through the traditional formulas, which simply do not work very well.

Will the feds ease the onerous rules on capital transit funding to allow the money to get spent in a way that might actually stimulate?

Our gov: missing the point of stimulus

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Gov. Doyle announced that federal stimulus money will help speed the reconstruction of North-South I-94 from Illinois to Milwaukee.

Wow! And the net stimulus effect of that will be…zero.

The I-94 project already was going to be done. All Doyle is doing is replacing some state dollars with federal dollars. Big whoop.

Using stimulus money just to avoid using state money is not the point and will not move the economy forward. The governor should be spending money on needed projects and jobs that would not be otherwise done. Light rail construction, for example, or helping households and businesses throughout the state install energy-conserving windows and doors.

Doyle announced the clunkily named Office of Recovery and Reinvestment (to be run by white guys from Madison — what a refreshing idea) to help figure out how to spend the money. Let’s hope they come up with something that will actually make a difference.