Ouch! Survey results pinch

Judy Putnam

A recently released survey of local Michigan officials has a depressing finding: Only 1 percent of local officials think the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has helped improve local economic conditions “very much.” Two out of every three say it has not helped at all to date, and more than half predict it won’t help at all over the long term.

Ouch! That’s a blow for those of us who have been advocating for extending vital features of the ARRA. (Those include extending the enhanced federal Medicaid match that will offer more than $500 million for next year’s state budget, Earned Income Tax Credit expansions, Child Tax Credit to benefit working poor families of nearly 600,000 kids in Michigan and 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for the state’s long-term unemployed.)

ARRA has poured critical dollars into our state at a critical time. Few of those dollars, however, went directly to local governments, a fact pointed out by the Michigan Municipal League in a well-publicized letter to Vice President Biden last year. Local governments struggle with the double whammy of sharply reduced revenue sharing from the state and declining property values, causing layoffs of public safety workers and other hardships.

But the Recovery Act money has flowed to many people in the communities: the unemployed, households on food assistance, those on Social Security and taxpayers. It is credited with saving an estimated 12,000 jobs in Michigan, most of them in education.  That help doesn’t go into a black hole — those are dollars that are quickly circulated in local economies.

The survey of more than 1,000 local officials was completed last fall. Perhaps, with time, more will see the benefit to their communities in projects such as weatherization.

Without doubt, the ARRA has paid off for local communities, even as tough times continue. What’s hard to imagine is how much worse it would be without the Recovery Act.

Michigan needed the Recovery Act in 2009. It needs it now – it’s important that Congress votes to extend the enhanced Medicaid match, EITC expansions, unemployment benefits and the Child Tax credit.

— Judy Putnam