Reporting from Washington — President Obama is facing complaints from big-city mayors and county politicians that parts of the economic stimulus package are shortchanging their constituents.
Vice President Joe Biden has been holding private conference calls on the stimulus with elected officials from around the country, some of whom have been telling him that metropolitan regions are losing out to rural areas in the competition for stimulus money.
That argument tracks a report released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors that concluded that cities have gotten a disproportionately small share of stimulus money set aside for road and other transportation improvements.
Harry Montoya, a commissioner in Santa Fe County, N.M., took part in a phone call with Biden earlier in the month and said he told the vice president that "the dollars are not trickling down to the local county governments regarding spending for projects that we have that are shovel-ready: road, water and wastewater projects."
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, newly installed president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, gave a speech to the association on June 15 saying he would ask his fellow mayors to "critically review every aspect" of the $787-billion stimulus package.
"In an effort to jump-start the economy, the federal government relied on old formulas that left behind our metropolitan areas," said Nickels, a Democrat. "That was a mistake."
The mayors commissioned a report looking at a pot of $18 billion in stimulus money set aside for transportation. When the report was released this month, the 85 most populated metropolitan areas had received $8.8 billion -- or 48% of the total. Yet those same areas account for 63% of the U.S. population and 73% of the gross domestic product, the report said.
Chicago would need to get another $250 million in stimulus transportation funds to reach a level that reflects its contribution to the Illinois economy, the report calculated. In Ohio, Cleveland and Cincinnati account for 40% of the total economy yet received less than 5% of the transportation stimulus funds earmarked for the state.
Mayors contend the stimulus relies too heavily on long-standing government formulas that make states the primary conduit for the cash. Once the money is funneled to states, governors and legislatures dole it out disproportionately to rural areas that have amassed political clout, mayors say.
