LaHood takes exception to AP article on road stimulus job locations

By this summer, DOT Secretary Ray LaHood wrote, Americans won’t be able to drive down the street without seeing people working at good-paying jobs. (Associated Press)

By LYNDON FINNEY
The Trucker Staff

5/11/2009

WASHINGTON — Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood this afternoon took exception to an Associated Press article that reported that counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama's plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges.

“I was disappointed to read today that the Associated Press does not believe that the Recovery Act is doing a good job creating work for Americans who are unemployed. Nothing could be further from the truth,” LaHood wrote in his blog on the DOT’s Web site.

“At the DOT, we have $48 billion to rebuild roads, bridges, highways, airport runways, ports and transit projects,” LaHood wrote. “And we have already signed off on transportation projects in all 50 states. Just 12 weeks after President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, we have approved 2,800 road projects and another 300 airport projects.”

LaHood said that amounted to over $10 billion “out the door and countless Americans going back to work.”

By this summer, LaHood wrote, Americans won’t be able to drive down the street without seeing people working at good-paying jobs.

He attributed those jobs to the Recovery Act money.

“Unfortunately, the AP’s analysis is misguided,” LaHood said. “Its reporters looked at 5,500 transportation projects from state lists and concluded that the transportation money is going to counties with low unemployment. But until the states make a request and the experts at the DOT certify that a project meets the criteria for Recovery dollars, those lists are not the final word.

“Basically, their (the Associated Press’) work amounts to nothing more than an academic exercise.”

For people who are out of work and at risk of losing their jobs, this construction work is a godsend, LaHood said he believed.

“Sadly, unemployed workers can be found all over our nation in these difficult economic times — even in counties that don’t have the highest unemployment rates,” the secretary wrote

“Governmental boundaries are often arbitrary, and workers know that,” LaHood noted. “People who work construction jobs often drive to wherever they can find work in a metropolitan area or region. Our idea is to drive down unemployment, period.”

LaHood said he told Brett Blackledge, the Associated Press writer who authored the story, about a recent trip he took to New Hampshire for a groundbreaking on highway 101.

“I shook hands with men and women who are going back to work thanks to the Recovery Act,” LaHood said. ”One man told me that he drives all over New England for construction jobs. Another said he is the father of four children and was unemployed until this project began. Now that he has this job, he will be commuting from Wolfeboro.

“Unfortunately, Brett didn’t think it was worth quoting me when I told him that the point of the program is to put people to work. And that’s something I’m proud of.”

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