Highway Development, or Community Development

The Paradox of “Shovel-Ready” Stimulus

By Jonathan Weber , 1-17-09

	Fixing the Road in Glacier National Park

As Congress and President-elect Obama press ahead with an $825 billion economic stimulous package, every industry and interest group under the sun is trying to figure out a way to get a piece of the pie. And why not? It isn’t often that the federal government steps up to dole out cash in this kind of way, and there are certainly plenty of worthy ways to spend the money.

There’s still a lot of haggling to come, but much of the total will go to tax cuts, and to shoring up education funding, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits. The infrastructure spending in the House version of the bill comes to around $100 billion, and while there are any number of ways that money could potentially be spent, one basic principle is pretty clear: it’s going to be distributed in a way that maximizes short-term job creation. That means projects that are “shovel-ready”: they’ve already gone through all the design and permitting and environmental review processes. And that in turn will effectively steer a lot of the dollars to road construction projects that state and local governments already have sitting on the shelf.

The logic in this approach is clear enough: the stimulous program is primarily a job-creation effort, and starting work on a new bridge or highway project puts people on the payroll right away. Engineering and construction contractors rightly see this as a lifeline that will save them from total devastation at a time when new private-sector construction projects have all but disappeared. The $3.1 billion infrastructure wish-list drawn up by the state of Montana is dominated by highway projects.

Yet it’s hard not to lament the lost opportunities here. While some of the bridge and road projects are important, others are on the back-burner because they deserve to be there. Meanwhile, forward-thinking programs that could have a major long-term impact on the shape of our communities - things like rail transit, conservation and restoration, and urban redevelopment - will be left aside. In Missoula, for example, we might get a new bridge over the Bitterroot, even though the reconstruction of the Russell Street corridor would be far more beneficial overall.

In a brilliant column a few weeks ago, David Brooks of the New York Times pointed out that living patterns and social desires are shifting, with the half-century push to the suburbs and exurbs reversing itself as people seek more functional and friendly communities.

Brooks, who is no lefty, writes: “If you asked people in that age of go-go suburbia what they wanted in their new housing developments, they often said they wanted a golf course. But the culture has changed. If you ask people today what they want, they’re more likely to say coffee shops, hiking trails and community centers.” He argues that the stimulus plan is a rare opportunity to encourage these emerging patterns, and particularly to create new kinds of transit systems and new types of town squares.

Brooks’ point is especially relevant for the Rocky Mountain West. Contrary to common conception, most people in the region live in cities and towns, but the sheer cost of connecting sprawling open spaces (combined with a sometimes-skewed political balance of power) means that municipalities often lose out when it comes to things like state transportation funds. As it’s shaping up now, the infrastructure piece of the federal stimulus package will mainly pump more money through state transportation agencies and fund projects that in many cases were conceived years ago (they have to be shovel-ready, remember). That means reinforcing old patterns of development rather than encouraging new ones.

It’s certainly true that a thorough and thoughtful approach to how best to spend the federal money would dictate that it be spent more slowly, which in turn would undermine the primary aim of the program (job-creation). On the other hand, there’s a risk that we’ll end up with bridges to nowhere, which might create some construction jobs for a couple of years but will do little for the underlying economic vitality of our communities, and in fact could work against it.

I don’t think it’s realistic to transform the stimulus package into some kind of community redevelopment program. But I do hope the shovel-ready approach, in addition to supporting critical road, water and sanitation projects, can be steered in part to the national parks and national forests, which have huge maintenance and restoration backlogs and lots of projects sitting on the shelf for lack of funding. And in an environment where everyone has their hand out for one thing or another, it’s especially important to hold our local and state elected officials accountable for how, exactly, the mana from Washington is going to be spent.

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