The Top 50 Stimulus Recipients in RI
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Three years and well over a billion dollars later, the top recipients of federal economic stimulus funds in Rhode Island were largely state and local government entities, a GoLocalProv review of federal data shows.
Of the top 50 recipients, at least 37 were state agencies, municipalities, school districts, or other government-affiliated organizations, such as the state Economic Development Corporation, or the Narragansett Bay Commission. Those private-sector organizations that have received stimulus funds run the gamut from the Gilbane Building Company to Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital. (See below chart for list and information on how data was calculated.)
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIn all, the top 50 recipients account for $897.8 million of the stimulus funds that flowed into the Ocean State.
Some of the money went towards rebuilding bridges and repaving roads. Institutions like Brown University and the University of Rhode Island tapped stimulus funds for both research projects and campus construction. And in cities like Providence, stimulus funds were used to create new district-wide curriculum standards, pay for substitute teachers, and keep police officers from being laid off.
Economic Boost?....
All of that money—not just what was pumped into the private sector—had a stimulating effect on the economy, according to Ed Mazze, business professor at the University of Rhode Island.
All those teachers and police officers who did not lose their jobs used paychecks they otherwise would not on everything from grocery shopping to keeping up with car payments, Mazze said.
That spending has a ripple effect throughout the economy, according to Mazze. “All of these stimulus funds do have an impact,” Mazze said. “All of these things generate dollars that immediately go back into the marketplace to purchase everyday items or [items] that have been postponed.”
He said the funds that came to Rhode Island, which are well in excess of a billion dollars, overall were more effective than the stimulus that went to higher population states, like California or New York. “The entire stimulus … was of real importance to Rhode Island because Rhode Island was having and continues to have a real problem getting out of the recession,” Mazze said.
But some stimulus projects had more of an immediate impact than others. “Anything that has to do with construction—at least for the use of these stimulus funds—would have a much greater ability to create new jobs, even though they’re for a shorter period of time,” Mazze said.
The benefit from funding that saved public-sector jobs, on the other hand, would have had more of a long-term benefit to the state economy, according to Mazze.
…or Government Bailout?
But, with an economy clearly still struggling, some wonder just how much help, if any, Rhode Island got from the stimulus.
“t hardly seems to have helped. Just look at our unemployment rate, our state’s structural deficit, our cities teetering on bankruptcy and legislators still intent on raising taxes. There aren’t enough local or federal taxpayers’ dollars to fix this mess,” said Lisa Blais, spokesperson for the Ocean State Tea Party in Action. “No, the program certainly has not produced enough new jobs in Rhode Island to justify the cost.”
The funds may have staved off layoffs in police departments and schools, but Blais wonders what will happen when the grant funds fade away.
Indeed, the steady stream of stimulus funds is already starting to slow to a trickle, as roughly half of the grants and contracts awarded in Rhode Island are now completed, while half of the remaining awards are more than 50 percent done. At the same time, many of the communities that happened to be in the top 50 list—Providence, West Warwick, Woonsocket, and Pawtucket—are in dire fiscal straits.
“This program has not lifted Rhode Island out of our economic nightmare,” Blais concluded. “We need to reduce our overall tax burden and create business-friendly public policy in order to stimulate our economy through private enterprise and not more government spending.”
Where did the money go?
From curriculum development to economic development, the Quality Institute to the Quonset Development Corporation, here is a breakdown of how some of the top 50 stimulus recipients told GoLocalProv they used the funds.
■ Department of Transportation: With a $166 million-plus boost from the stimulus, DOT was able to initiate 73 transportation projects around the state. Of the total, 69 were highway-related, two were transit, and two were for high-speed rail. A number of these projects had been on hold for years, others were completed on a faster timelines that would otherwise have been possible, according to DOT spokeswoman, Heidi Gudmundson. (In all, the department received $171.4 million in stimulus funds, but some projects are not included in the $166 million figure used in this report because they were managed by other organizations.)
■ Providence Schools: Stimulus funds financed the implementation of district-wide curriculum standards and guidelines, known as the Aligned Instruction System. This system ensures that students in the same grades at different schools are learning the same materials—something that was not always the case beforehand, according to spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly. “As a for-instance—prior to the writing of the core curriculum, it was found that though magnetism and its properties were being tested in the fourth grade Science NECAP, most of our elementary schools were not doing a unit on magnetism until Grade 5,” O’Reilly said. “So, the teaching expectations have to be aligned with the testing expectations across the board.”
Funds were specifically used for the following: outside vendors, like the Charles A. Dana Center; purchasing of instructional textbooks and electronic resources; salaries for substitute teachers (while regular teachers worked on the curriculum project); and professional development.
■ Pawtucket: In Pawtucket, as in many other communities, the lion’s share of the stimulus funds went to the schools. The funds helped the city improve its financial situation—but only to a point. “It lets us stretch out our own dollars,” said Director of Administration Tony Pires. “But the general nature of the grants is not to supplant existing resources but to supplement them.” In other words, the stimulus could pay for education services that Pawtucket otherwise could not afford, but the city could not use them for things like paying down unfunded pension liabilities, according to city spokesman Doug Hadden.
■ Brown University: Approximately $40 million in stimulus funds went to Brown, enabling researchers to buy equipment, fund projects, and build the research infrastructure for the university and the broader research community in the state, according to spokeswoman Darlene Trew Crist. “For example, Brown received a grant for over a million dollars to fund the creation of high-capacity cyber connectivity between the Jewelry District and the main campus,” she said. “This will allow Brown and researchers from URI and other institutions to do genomic sequencing at a level that was completely unimaginable before; the connectivity could not have supported the massive amounts of data.”
■ University of Rhode Island: After Brown, URI was the second highest recipient that was a college or university. Some of the funding went towards research initiatives, but most of it was for construction projects around campus, according to Robert Weygand, the vice president of administration and finance. Examples: $12 million to make fire code improvements to campus buildings and $2.8 million to build a behavioral sciences lab.
■ Rhode Island Quality Institute: A nonprofit health care organization based in Providence, the Quality Institute was the only organization to receive three major health-care related stimulus awards in the country, according to communications director Lisa DiPrete. One award was used to create a statewide database of electronic medical records. A second award helped enroll medical practices in that database. The third was used to fund an analysis of statewide medical data on patients who have diabetes, suffer from depression, or are smokers.
■ Quonset Development Corporation: Close to $27 million in stimulus funds were used to improve the infrastructure at Quonset, according to spokesman David Preston, who said the benefits of those improvements will be long-lasting. Overall, Quonset has seen 2,700 additional jobs in the last seven years. Short term jobs gains include 35 construction, engineering, and inspection jobs over the past year and a half.
In the medium term, Quonset is expecting 300 to 400 permanent jobs will be created thanks to the infrastructure upgrade at the Port of Davisville, funded through a $22.3 million TIGER grant. “This includes the approximately $10.4 million cost for the purchase and preparation of the facility for the mobile harbor crane,” Preston said. “It also includes upgrades to the piers and the rail tracks. These improvements will allow the Port to continue to move up the rankings as one of North America’s largest auto importers.” (The port currently ranks seventh, according to Preston.)
Even more jobs are expected in the long-term: approximately 1,000 when the Romano Vineyard Way Bridge opens up an area south of Davisville Road that previously had been accessible only by two dangerous and outdated at-grade rail crossings, according to Preston. He concluded: “The stimulus projects at the Quonset Business Park will be paying dividends for the people of Rhode Island for years—even decades—to come. The improvements will allow us to expand the business capacity of Quonset Business Park and the Port of Davisville, and we will see more jobs and more revenues enter the state.”
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