MANATEE — Florida has picked up its spending of federal stimulus money for roads, bridges and transit projects, but still lags behind most other states, according to a report released Tuesday.
Fewer than half of the 530 Florida projects that have been approved for stimulus money were under contract as of Jan. 29, said the report by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Florida’s 48.1 percent rate was the 13th-lowest among U.S. states and well below the national average of 65 percent.
The fastest state was Maine, which had all but one of its 73 approved stimulus projects under contract, the highway officials group said. California was slowest, with contracts on just 13.6 percent of its projects.
“Different states have chosen to invest their dollars in different types of projects,” was how Larry “Butch” Brown, the group’s president and Mississippi’s transportation director, explained why some are spending faster than others.
The report was the latest to highlight Florida’s pace of stimulus spending on transportation, which has been criticized as being too slow.
In August, the House transportation committee ranked Florida last in terms of stimulus spending and accused the state of not following the stimulus package’s goal of creating jobs quickly. The federal Government Accountability Office also has criticized the pace of Florida’s spending.
But state transportation officials said they are using a go-slow spending strategy, which includes using large chunks of stimulus money on large highway projects and following regular bidding procedures, to prolong the economic benefit.
“While some of these states are done with their resurfacing projects, we’ll still have people working,” said Kevin Thibault, a Florida Department of Transportation assistant secretary.
Thibault also said the highway officials’ report was based on outdated data, and that Florida has awarded more contracts and commenced construction and completed more projects than what was outlined in the report.
The report, released a week before the one-year anniversary of the $787 stimulus package becoming law, said more than 12,250 stimulus-funded transportation projects are underway or have been completed nationwide. Those projects have directly employed 280,000 people, it said.
The highway group said the report showed that its members have succeeded in getting projects started and creating and saving jobs.
“The transportation industry was the poster child of the stimulus,” Brown said during a conference call with reporters, noting that bids are coming in as much as 30 percent below estimates. “We’re proud of the work we’ve done across the country in the last 12 months. We’ve done it on time and under budget.”
He also said he expects most states, including Florida, to meet the March 2 deadline to obtain federal approval for all of their stimulus projects.
Ten states already have achieved that milestone, and the others “are in a mad scramble right now” to get their final approvals, Brown said.
But the highway group wants more: It’s lobbying Congress to pass a second job-creation bill to fund more road, bridge and transit projects. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday he hopes to complete work on a roughly $80 billion jobs bill by the end of the week.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Duane Marsteller, transportation/growth and development reporter, can be reached at 745-7080, ext. 2630.
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