Questions are raised about some state projects designated for federal stimulus funds

“Rearing large numbers of arthropods” probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think about using Connecticut’s $3 billion in federal economic stimulus cash.

But the U.S. Forest Service is using part of the $2.3 million it’s spending here to fix up a quarantine research facility in Ansonia. (The arthropods, by the way, are nasty invasive insects like the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the infamous “predator of the hemlock,” the woolly adelgid.)

Nearly $1.3 million in federal economic recovery money is targeted for “archaeological surveys” and maintenance work at two man-made lakes in eastern Connecticut. State officials are more than a little pissed off by that one — they were hoping the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would be using its money for things like dredging Clinton and Old Saybrook harbors.

Another $2.9 million in stimulus cash is going to pay for a dry dock at a bankrupt shipyard in Bridgeport that is currently building what could be the largest luxury yacht ever to come out of the U.S.

“Nonsense projects,” sputters Charles LeConche, business manager of the Connecticut Laborers District Council. “Of what value is that dry-dock project? We’ve got highway gridlock. Our roads stink.”

“That wasn’t the intent of the stimulus package,” LeConche says. “The intent was to create jobs. … My Local in New London has 500 people out of work!”

That kind of frustration is growing as the recession lingers and this year’s construction season fades. And some of the oddball projects being approved for federal stimulus dollars aren’t helping the public mood.

According to the latest state figures, 164 jobs have been created so far by the nine stimulus-funded highway projects started in Connecticut this summer. It’s a number that has both labor and business raising hell.

“Back in February and March, everyone’s expectation was that the stimulus money would have a big impact on jobs here,” says Donald Shubert, president of the Connecticut Construction Industry Association. “It didn’t come true. Very little actual work is taking place. … We know this season is lost.”

One reason for the stimulus angst is that people don’t really understand how little of the money is going to infrastructure projects that directly create jobs, according to Matthew Fritz, an aide to Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

Fritz has been assigned to monitor how federal dollars rolling into Connecticut are being spent and to field all the complaints about bureaucratic red tape.

He says “less than 20 percent” of the stimulus package, both nationally and in Connecticut, is being pumped into basic infrastructure projects like highway and bridge construction.

About $1.3 billion of the Connecticut total is coming as increased federal Medicaid funding.

Fritz says this state has already gotten more than $600 million in stimulus dollars so far, with $400 million of that coming through the Medicaid program and another $84 million is being used for boosting unemployment payments.

As for the bitching about slow-motion transportation projects, Fritz is philosophical.

“I think our agencies are actually moving pretty quickly,” he says. Fritz says state departments can sometimes take years to approve projects, award contracts and get work started. “Now we’re seeing projects moving in months.

“We’d all like to see us move as fast as we can,” Fritz adds.

Fritz said stimulus funds also paid for about 4,000 part- and full-time youth jobs in Connecticut this summer.

Shubert admits the state has done a good job in choosing which major projects should be financed under the economic recovery program. He says the state Department of Transportation is going to have a lot more of its stimulus-funded projects ready to roll next spring.

The question of how some federal agencies decide how to use the stimulus money can lead you down a rabbit hole into a bureaucratic wonderland.

Fritz says Connecticut officials “were expecting and hopeful” the Army Corps of Engineers would use its share of the economic recovery money for harbor dredging rather than archaeological surveys at Mansfield Hollow Lake and West Thompson Lake.

Tim Dugan, the regional spokesman for the Corps, says many of the projects getting funded by his agency are things that have been “on the books for a while but that we haven’t been able to get money for.” The archaeological surveys, for example, are mandated by a 1966 federal historic preservation law. Along comes a pot of federal money, and poof! — let the surveying commence.

That U.S. Forest Service facility in Ansonia might not seem too economically stimulating, but it does have an important job in studying invasive pests that can kill millions of trees if they aren’t stopped. Anyway, it’s kind of cool to have a building in Ansonia featuring “double air-lock systems with light traps … three negative pressure zones ... [and] a pass-through auto-clave,” according to the U.S. Forest Service Web site.

The federal grant to expand dry-dock facilities at Derecktor Shipyard in Bridgeport could help a company that employs something like 250 workers at their shipyards in New York, Connecticut and Florida. A spokesperson for the company’s Bridgeport yard says the federal money will “help keep people employed,” but doesn’t have anything to do with their efforts to get out of bankruptcy. “We will be reporting soon that we will be out of Chapter 11,” the spokesperson says. “We won’t be using the federal stimulus money until the fall.”

The U.S. Maritime Administration money is part of a $100 million economic recovery fund dedicated to helping small shipyards survive and prosper. (Just never mind about that 281-foot super-luxury yacht — currently under construction — with its on-board theater, spa and gymnasium. It’s called the “Cakewalk,” and there are rumors the price tag could approach $100 million.)

State Senate Republican Leader John McKinney of Fairfield said the shipyard “has been an important addition for Bridgeport.” McKinney says such projects are all part of the ongoing debate over the best way to use all that federal cash. “Do you put the federal money into projects that are ready to go but are not a top priority? Do you do one big project, or 10 small ones?”

Rell was criticized at a recent state legislative hearing for putting federal stimulus dollars into more fuel-efficient buses for public transportation. Critics complained those buses aren’t being built in Connecticut and won’t produce new jobs. But McKinney points out that expanding public transit and increasing fuel efficiency of state vehicles are both important bipartisan policy goals.

As so often happens with taxpayer money, the debate often comes down to purely political considerations.

“One legislator’s pork is another legislator’s important local district project,” McKinney says.

Where all those woolly adelgids fit in this equation is anybody’s guess.

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3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."