In the early 1930’s, with the United States still in the early stages of the Great Depression, FDR proposed a stimulus bill. Besides being a supremely confident egotist, tireless liberal advocate, cut throat politician and war leader, FDR was also a master communicator and marketer. Obama would do well to learn a thing or two, despite his rhetorical reputation.

FDR realized that Americans needed more than money, or jobs, or nice words on the radio that things were getting better. They needed tangible signs that the country was getting better. They needed proof they could see with their own eyes that their neighbors were back to work, and the government’s money was being spent on real projects of use to the community. They needed facts to confront fear and cynicism. Thus, the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps were born.  

Those two organizations did projects around the country that continue to benefit us to this day. They built schools, roads, bridges and public infrastructure. They hired artists to paint murals and include statues and carvings in new public buildings. They built the national park infrastructure that we know today, including iconic lodges and roads that are marvels of engineering at some of America’s crown jewels: Yellowstone, Glacier and Rocky Mountain. In Buffalo, WPA projects are scattered throughout the city, from small school reconstructions to the Old Rockpile and Buffalo Zoo. Regionally, Allegheny State Park and Letchworth extensively use infrastructure built by the CCC. In all cases, FDR was smart enough to place a plaque at each site, and remind the public where these projects came from.

Contrast this with our current “stimulus” ARRA bill. One third of the $786 billion has been spent, and very few people can tell you where it has gone. Tangible projects we all can see have been replaced with a website that is heavy on wonkiness and light on clarity, and provides ambiguous information on a variety of projects. I suppose its mapping function works well if you care more about what agency got the money than what work is being done. If that’s not an insight to the federal bureaucracy, I don’t what is.

So where is Stimulus money being spent in Buffalo? Can you name any projects off the top of your head? Buffalo Business First did an analysis a couple weeks ago, and ranked the projects by jobs created, and money spent.  The top of both lists? $73.6 million and 111 jobs at West Valley, to speed up clean up work that has been on-going for years. Six of the top ten job producers are work study programs at area colleges: 230 students working at libraries and delivering AV equipment at UB, Buff State, Canisius, Daemen, St. Bonaventure and ECC. Rounding out the top job producers are the NFTA (33.8 (?) workers upgrading batteries along the Metro Rail line), WNY AmeriCorps (22 VISTA positions) and the VA (19 folks paving the parking lot at the hospital). Top spenders of stimulus money? A new drain to keep floaties out of the Commercial Slip at Canalside ($17.7 million), $20.5 million to Buffalo Public Schools to retain teachers, $30.8 million to three agencies to help weatherize homes, $14.5 million for 56 hybrid buses for the NFTA, $6.5 million for BURA, and $7 million to repave Maple Road. Wow – Maple Road.

This Stimulus Plan had the potential to be as transformative as President Obama’s salesman-in-chief rhetoric. How about $786 billion in these five areas: public WiFi, high speed rail, next gen green energy, basic scientific research and national park reconstruction. Projects in those areas would be an investment in the future, not a propagation of the status quo or a finger in the dike. There is a smattering, as an afterthought, of those items in the stimulus bill, but they are dwarfed by the mass mush of uninspired projects that were going to be done anyway. BURA just granted a couple million to help redevelop the abandoned German orphanage on the East Side, making David Torke happy. Was that stimulus money? Who knows. Out of the biggest projects I laid out for Buffalo, how many are transformative? New hybrid buses, maybe?

This stimulus plan has not lived up to any of its hype, and seems unlikely to do so in the future when the rest of the money is spent. Instead, it has become another symbol of the narrative of the first 14 months of the Obama administration: over promise and under deliver. The seas don’t have to recede and lions need not lay down with lambs – I’d be happy with a couple jobs and projects more inspired than a 2 inch asphalt lift on a suburban road.