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Stimulus Slow to Flow to Infrastructure08-25-09 | News

Stimulus Slow to Flow to Infrastructure

The Coast Guard has decided to spend the majority of its $240 million on four bridges, but a spokesman said the money won't transfer hands for a while. ?EUR??,,????'??? Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Patience will be needed when anticipating how the stimulus package will help out the construction industry. Stimulus spending on infrastructure projects is moving slowly and many projects won’t get started before the summer construction season ends. This complicates the Obama administration’s efforts to tout the impact of the $787 billion economic recovery act.

General Services Administration (GSA) has decided how to spend $1 billion on federal building upgrades, but only about 1 percent of that money has been spent. GSA will approve another $1 billion by year’s end, but Anthony Costa, acting commissioner of the GSA’s public buildings services, said it will take until 2011 before the agency picks projects for all of the $5.5 billion it was allocated for infrastructure work.

Federal Transit Administration has spent about $500 million of the $8.4 billion it received. California’s transportation department has decided how to spend $1.7 billion of the $2.6 billion it is getting for highway infrastructure projects, but the agency says its spending on such projects probably won’t peak until next year. ?EUR??,,????'??? Courtesy of Wall Street Journal