Stimulus Update: A Look At Who Benefited From Federal Funding
Click here to read an article about how stimulus
dollars were spent in Massachusetts.
Medical Research
As the economy tanked in 2008, William Kobertz, an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UMass Medical School, was in a pinch.
Kobertz was conducting studies on hearing and the heart, lungs and blood. Specifically, he and his team were researching how potassium channels in the body play a role in various afflictions, from heart attacks to hearing loss.
But Kobertz was running low on funding. He thought he would have to lay off a chemist who was working on both of the projects, as well as a research associate and a lab manager. The total came to 2.5 full-time positions.
Kobertz applied for stimulus funding and received $1.1 million for the project, allowing him to keep everyone working.
“I think it really helped us out,” Kobertz said. “With this money we’re hopefully doing some really neat and exciting chemistry that will allow us to see potassium channels in a way no one else has been able to.”
The extent to which Massachusetts chose to fund medical research was unique across the country. At $990 million, the Bay State ranked second in the country in the amount of stimulus money funneled through the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers in recent years have been faced with declining levels of research funding.
“The pie has definitely gotten smaller,” Kobertz said.
As medical research stimulus funding expires, President Obama has requested a 3- percent increase for the NIH budget for the next federal fiscal year. But there are no guarantees it will pass.
Kobertz has finished his hearing study and is still working on his heart, lung and blood study. He said that he is a bit worried about funding in the post-stimulus era.
“We could be going into a stimulus hangover,” he said. “That’s a fair statement.”
Horizontal Construction
Lunenburg-based P.J. Keating and Co., a paving company that does business across several states, netted four stimulus contracts and two sub-contracts totaling approximately $25 million.
James Reger, who is vice president of governmental and industrial affairs of the southern New England division of Oldcastle Materials Group, which owns P.J. Keating, said that the stimulus contracts helped his company avoid layoffs.
Though Reger was happy to receive the money, he said it has delayed the pain in some ways.
“We weren’t in a position to be able to create new jobs,” Reger said. “This was really just, for us, a one-shot deal. It kept people employed.”
P.J. Keating laid off some workers this year due to a diminishing backlog of work, he said. The private market has not recovered enough to get P.J. Keating back to its usual annual schedule of a dozen major jobs or more. His company is currently working on three such projects.
“Now that there’s no more money left, the question becomes: What do you do?” he said.
Reger said he hopes that Congress can pass a long-delayed transportation bill, which will provide funding to states for transportation projects. He has lobbied for the passage of a bill alongside other contractors from the Transportation Construction Coalition.
With the stimulus running out and the private construction market not yet up to snuff, Reger said he hopes something happens soon.
Municipal Support
The Canal District in Worcester is getting a makeover thanks to stimulus money.
A construction crew from Newton-based Paolini Corp. is working on streetscape improvements for the district. The project is being funded by $5.3 million in federal stimulus money administered by the state Department of Transportation.
“It’s really going to change the whole look of the neighborhood,” said Joseph Borbone, director of engineering for the city.
Crews will reconstruct roadways and sidewalks on Green, Water and Millbury streets. They will also install new lighting, benches and bike racks.
Borbone said that the district’s business association worked with Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Worcester, to secure funding for the project.
“It would have been very difficult to find a funding source for this without the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) funding,” Borbone said. “Especially with state and federal funds being short over the past few years.”
The district’s business association has said that it would eventually like the city to reopen a portion of the historic Blackstone Canal that used to run through the district, a move they hope would attract tourists and economic activity.
That would be a big project, Borbone said, but each improvement to the district could be a step toward fulfilling that dream.
Classroom Funding
In the Dudley-Charlton School District, $6.2 million in stimulus funding that started flowing to its schools in 2009 meant avoiding layoffs of teachers and staff, said William Trifone, the district’s finance director.
“It would have a meant a third of our staff going,” Trifone said. “We would have lost 35 to 40 teaching positions.”
But instead of layoffs, Trifone said that the district was able to provide jobs over the past two years for six additional people, four of them tutors, he said.
But as the stimulus money expires, district officials, like many across the state, find themselves looking to the next few years with concern.
The Dudley-Charlton district has approximately $1.1 million left for this fiscal year, which began July 1. Trifone said officials made it a point to preserve as much of the money as possible for the upcoming school year, knowing ahead of time that layoffs would be all but guaranteed.
“We’ve seen such small increases in state revenue, and even though our teachers were cooperative and took extremely small raises, we still had to eliminate 14 positions for the upcoming year,” Trifone said.
Most of those positions have been eliminated through attrition. Three were layoffs, he said.
But that isn’t the worst of it. In fiscal year 2014, Trifone expects a large budget gap.
“This will look like a small gust of wind compared to what were going to face a year from now,” Trifone said. “I’m extremely concerned.”
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