$121,125,647 to be (more or less) exact. That’s how much of Uncle Sam’s money flowed into Humboldt County between February 17, 2009, and September 30, 2010, as a result of President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. And the vast majority of that cheddar has been in the form of grants.
If you haven’t yet noodled around on Recovery.gov, you’re missing out on a cornucopia of accountability. For example, you can break down the data in a variety of ways — by recipient, zip code, county, Congressional district, state and more — plus interactive maps provide even more data.
Here’s a brief breakdown of the county numbers:
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$39.2 million in grants has been awarded to the California Department of Transportation for work on roads and bridges in Humboldt County
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$7.8 million in grants has gone to county government. The largest of these awards was a $3.4 million Workforce Investment Board grant from the California Department of Employment Development
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$5 million in grants has been given to the Redwood Community Action Agency, including a $1.6 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (part of a statewide homelessness prevention initiative) and a $1.4 million grant from the Department of Energy (part of a statewide weatherization assistance program)
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$3.2 million in grants was awarded to the Northern California Indian Development Council, more than $3 million of which came from the Department of Health and Human Services [and was evidently distributed by the NCIDC to tribes statewide — see Greg Gehr’s comment below]
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$2.1 million in grants went to the City of Eureka (and still they have budget problems?), including $631,796 to hire cops and $665,129 for street repairs
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$1.1 million in grants has been given to county schools
The effects of these funds are incalculable, but the coin of the realm for many commentators and pundits (who vastly oversimplify matters, some would argue) has been the number of jobs created. According to recipient reports, here in Humboldt County we’ve seen fewer than 180 jobs as a result of these monies. In case you’re curious, that works out to an average annual salary of $673,256.88.
This article appears in R.I.P. Prop. 19.
No wonder so many liberal Democrats in Humboldt!
How much does that add up per vote?
who do you have to sleep with to get that average salary?
Bet POP won’t bust these prostitutes!
That’s ridiculous, you know half of that has to go for management, oh, wait…
Ryan:
There is a basic flaw in the statistics that are collected for the ARRA grants, and are further quoted in this Northcoast Journal article. For example, while the Northern California Indian Development Council (NCIDC), whose headquarters is in Eureka California, did indeed receive over 3 million dollars in ARRA funding, the vast majority of these funds were for a Statewide project. These funds were split up among over 100 tribes and 57 counties within the State for a wide array of Indian programs, with NCIDC simply acting as the “pass-through” agency for the Federal and State funding sources. Most of the funds reported for NCIDC were not allocated to or spend within Humboldt County.
The ARRA statistics the Federal government collected did not account for where the funds were allocated or spent, but rather just where the headquarters of the funding agency was located. This aberration in the statistics collected was pointed out to the State and Feds during the course of the ARRA grant, but the Feds chose not to make any changes to their statistical collection methods.
Further, if you look at the detail for the jobs created on the federal recovery.gov web site, many Grants have “zero” jobs noted, which is an error in the federal database, and does not reflect the data reported by this agency or many others.
Also, “jobs created” is only one of many services provided and reported on for the utilization of funding through this program. By only using the “jobs created” statistic and dividing this by total funding, a completely inaccurate picture is painted of the many services provided. This does not take into account any of the emergency services for food or shelter. It does not factor in community health and tobacco abuse/prevention programs that were funded, or youth and education program services provided. It completely ignores the child care services that were funded, and many other program services too. In short, dividing the total funds by the number of full time equivalent (FTE) jobs created is a meaningless mathematical exercise that may make for more page hits on your blog, but has no basis in reality when analyzing the total service provided by the ARRA funds.
I know you follow me on Twitter, you work across the street from me, and you have my phone number. The next time you are doing an article on a subject that includes information about a program under my direct control, I want to encourage you to tweet me, call me, or walk across the street to my office for “the rest of the story” before you post your article.
All best
Greg Gehr
Assistant Director, NCIDC
So approx. $10,000,000 dollars of the $39,200,000 given to Caltrans for the Richardson Grove “improvement” project aka bigger freeway through old growth that nobody wants in the first place. Caltrans took every penny they could and made up reasons for needing it. Nobody from Humboldt propositioned a bigger freeway through Richardson Grove. That’s money much better spent on our schools, public programs, etc. The big picture just got a little bigger.
Shame on you Caltrans. Put that money straight into your actual workers’ paychecks while working on necessary, and welcomed projects instead. The workers whose paychecks you’ve cut instead.
@Greg Gehr: Thanks for the added info, Greg. I’ll make a note in the post about the $3M grant being applied statewide.
Your statement regarding the statistical flaw in federal reportage may be true with regards to NCIDC, but it’s clearly not true across the board. Take a look at the Dept. of Transportation link above. There, the grants are indeed broken out by local expenditure, despite the fact that the recipient’s headquarters are in Sacramento.
Regarding jobs numbers: As I noted in the post, the effects of ARRA funds are impossible to quantify, and anyone looking only at jobs created is oversimplifying matters.
Lastly, this is not an “article.” It’s a blog post, intended to point out some information available at Recovery.gov. If I follow it up with a news story, I’ll be sure to contact the major recipients to discuss the nuances and effects of their grants — you included.
Until then, see you on the Twitter.
“…bigger freeway through old growth that nobody wants…”?
why, joel…why the rhetorical question? I can only interpret it as snide. Caltrans just cut paychecks, worker’s pentions, everything right across the board, and that money’s going right into management’s hands and basic stocks, completely sidestepping their own ground crew. And nobody but Caltrans put the Richardson Grove “improvement project”, their words, on Humboldt’s table.
Sarah,
While i dont know the specifics of each ARRA contract, i can tell you that most state and fed contracts frown on management costs over 10%.
quite frankly, Joel, I’ve read the local blogs etc. enough to know you have a habit of never elaborating on any comment you make, and your comments are usually one-line sarcasms. What you do is commonly refered to as “trolling”. Ask the next caltrans street crewman if he’d rather have some of his benefits back or work on a project being met with heavy opposition by the people living around it.
The Richardson Grove Improvement Project wasn’t proposed by anybody within Humboldt County, and is very literally a bigger freeway than the one already cutting through old growth forest.
Does that answer your question?
The Richardson Grove Improvement Project was indeed proposed by people in Humboldt County, in response to STAA restrictions.
Disgusted, you’re welcome on the site — mostly — but you might want to import a touch of the humility you exhibit on other NCJ threads, under a different pseudonym, into this one. No crime to being a newcomer.
STAA and the state approached Humboldt. Their overall plan isn’t being presented as an option whatsoever. You know that much, I hope, given your position in the biz.
I have no idea what you’re talking about humility vs. the health of our county and politics as usual pinching everybody’s paycheck. I think you’re reading something into my words that isn’t there. It’s a very important matter and I refuse to crack a joke about it.
“Humility,” meaning admitting when you know not of whence you speak. STAA access through Richardson Grove has been a stated county economic development goal for ages and ages and ages.
Sorry, Hank, you don’t and won’t “get it”, exemplified in this and other recent topics. Maybe you think I discourage others from participating, maybe you’re afraid to speak your own peace, maybe you’re under instructions not to scare away advertisers, or allow people “like me” to do so. I’ll spare you any future presence whatsoever in your engaging and thought provoking paper and its blog, but rest assured I’ll pick up a copy every week. Or is it presense? I’m not so great at spelling. There’s some humility for ya.
Look, Disgusted, you are more than welcome to hang around. Please don’t go away. You’ve been very chatty around here lately, and it is appreciated.
You don’t seem like a bad sort. I just gotta wonder what causes someone to assert something with total confidence and some condescension — “the Richardson Grove Improvement Project wasn’t anyone in Humboldt County’s idea,” “you just don’t ‘get it'” (again with those random quotation marks) — when they don’t really know much about the history of the thing at all.
Disputation can be fun and worthwhile, but when it becomes an end in itself, detached from anything real-world, then it just seems counterproductive.
No need to be bothered by Disgusted checking out of the forums, Hank. The level of discussion was not elevated by Disgusted’s presence.
@ STELO, you are correct about the “caps” on admin. costs in ARRA contracts, although it varies depending on the type of funds. In the case of Community Service Block Grant (CSBG) ARRA funds, the admin cap is 12%.
@ Ryan, Thanks for the addition to the story. I appreciate it. I do think you are splitting hairs a too little fine on the difference between a NCJ “post” vs what I termed it, which was a “post an article”. As an example, I offer up your Moxon “blog post” in which you interviewed Peter, Greg, Patrick, and placed a call to Kathy which was “not returned by the end of the work day.” All of that blog post sounds a lot more like you treated it as a “news article” to me, but really not a big deal. Thanks again for the addition.
@GregGehr
Disgusted,
I want the Richardson’s Grove improvements. Just thought you might want to know because you said nobody wants it.
Thank you for reporting this information and links, Ryan and Mr. Sims. This is the first report I’ve heard cogently– and nearly completely– of the monies spent in Humboldt County, reported nowhere else as far as I can discern. Outstanding. Only a small amount of this ‘Obama money’ has actually been publicized by the actual recipients.
I do wish it provided for more direct employment, however; $121 Mil seems like quite a lot of ‘stimulus’ had it gone completely to employment or crumbling infrastructure needs.
I suppose these numbers don’t take into account the money spent for supplies and products, and the direct benefit this spending brought in the form of local tax revenues and support of businesses.
I was a recipient of an ARRA grant job. On a personal note, my experience was truly wonderful. I was able to find work with a true purpose and help many families in our community through difficult times. Not to mention help an extremely understaffed and budget deprived department of the county. However, my time with the county was short lived…. In September the extension for the section of the ARRA grant I was under was not extended. Now, I work as a volunteer at the same job because I believe in the work and the dept… But how do I pay my bills??