September 17, 2010 07:50 PM UTC

$2M per Job: Slow-rolling Stimulus Spending

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• by: CoalCreekWildfire

The LA Times reports that two Los Angeles city departments received $111M from the stimulus and have created 55 jobs. That’s over $2M per job in a city with 12% unemployment.

No, Los Angeles is not paying them the $787,637 salary that the town of Bell paid its City Manager (Bell is in Los Angeles County).

The problem is government contracting rules. Buying 16 buses took a year because city officials forgot to get the city council’s approval. Awarding some contracts took eight months and, in my experience, it will take one to three more months to set up contract administration and to spend the 1st dollar.

Agencies start the lengthy public hearing and contract process when they have the money in hand. The process can take a year for any but the simplest jobs. Even then, the city has been very slow to move.

The Stimulus bill anticipated the slow ramp-up, with most of the money spent in 2010. The Republicans cynically claimed that the timing would help Democrats in the mid-term elections. As it turned out, the Democrats have been hurt by an even slower ramp-up, a weak recovery, and the Republicans’ ability to shift the topic to “ineffective government spending.”

David Zahniser, Two L.A. agencies get $111 million in stimulus funds but have created only 55 jobs, Los Angeles Times, Local Section, 9/17/2010 8:40 AM PDT, http://t.co/GcmoHHE

Nicole Gelinas, Bell’s Debt Tolls, City Journal, 8/6/2010, http://www.city-journal.org/20…