I just went to my City's Web Site and found their list of programs to submit for a share of any available Stimulus Money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
The items they had to list, when submitting the projects to the US Conference of Mayors, included the projects and the "jobs" that would be created.
Unfortunately, my city "fudged" the "Jobs Created" portion.
My city, in Texas, has created a list that totals $679,128,804 and purportedly creates 2426 jobs. Tonight's council agenda
(Note: All current council members are Repubs.)
What I found was that the city has a partially good list of uses for the money, but the jobs it claims to create are nonexistant. Instead, for most of the list, the city would hire outside companies to do contract work but lists the contractors' employees as "jobs created". These are NOT new jobs, but ARE perhaps the continued employment for the contract employees.
Other items are absolutely ridiculous:
"City Wide Surveillance Camera Project". $3,500,000 jobs: 5
In a city of 60,000, why would we need this project? Big brother to watch us?
"Safety Town". $1,500,000 jobs: 125
No explanation for what this is, or who it will employ.
Under Energy, most of the items are normal building maintenance. All will hire outside contractors, yet they list a total of 108 jobs.
Also included is a mojor freeway project ($600,000,000 and 600 jobs) that will of course not be built by city employees. Oh, and the project is to build a toll road.
These are just examples from my own local government.
We ALL need to watch what is submitted. While it IS important to keep everyone employed, it is equally important to make sure our local governments are really creating new jobs, not listing existing jobs as new just to get some of the money.
We MUST make sure REAL JOBS are being created.