Mar 10, 2009

Cash for stimulus*,**

The Pasadena Star-News reports on a Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan that allows cities without 'shovel-ready' transportation projects to sell their federal stimulus allotment to cities with projects for cash. Sierra Madre, La Habra Heights, Rolling Hills and Bradbury have already made deals.

*Updated 9:51 p.m.: The Los Angeles Times follows the Star-News story and finds that MTA officials suddenly aren't so comfortable with nature of some of the deals:
Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is responsible for distributing federal highway and transit stimulus funds to agencies in Los Angeles County, said they had no objection to this kind of exchange provided the projects that are to receive stimulus funds meet the federal criteria.

But officials sent a letter to city managers and others Tuesday saying that efforts by more municipalities to take the bartering process a step further will not be allowed.
**Updated March 11, 7:11 a.m.: The Star-News had a folo of its own. Apparently MTA staff just didn't understand what the MTA board wanted - and neither did the cities, where officials that had completed deals are freaking out. The MTA now says the deals are strictly limited to a dollar-for-dollar exchange of federal stimulus money for future allocations of county Measure R transportation funds.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

good story. too bad the star-news website didn't see fit to put it at the top of the page. instead, it's downpage with a story on dim sum.

Anonymous said...

Ha ha. If you managed to get your lazy duff out of bed before 11 in the morning you might have seen it as the #1 story in the Local News section.

And what's up with the dim sum dis? You don't like Chinese, dude?

pasadenapio said...

Pasadena is big enough that we don't need to consider selling stimulus bucks. We have plenty of projects to dedicate the money to!