Are stimulus funds going to create jobs?

Officials try to find best use of monies

By ANNABELLE ROBERTSON
Item Staff Writer
arobertson@theitem.com

Stimulus funds are flowing, thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into legislation last month. According to President Obama, the act is designed to “create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years.”

Just one month into the two-year plan, however, many are asking if the stimulus is working. Can it actually keep jobs and create new ones?

TRANSPORTATION
“The only way you can create jobs is to go out and build something, and that’s a decision that has to be made by the Legislature and the governor,” said Sumter native House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., alluding to the ongoing feud between him and Gov. Mark Sandford, who has been steadfast in refusing to accept stimulus funding.

The state Department of Transportation was one of the first agencies to get funding under the act. Several weeks ago, the SCDOT was granted $200 million for highway resurfacing, interstate maintenance and bridge replacements. According to Sammy Hendrix of the Carolina Association of General Contractors, the construction industry is “cautiously optimistic” about the funding.

“There is some excitement, yes,” Hendrix said, “but (contractors) aren’t overly excited because they look at jobs from a long-term standpoint. They work on a basis of how many jobs they can accumulate during a year – a backlog, they call it – and none of them have any backlog.”

There is no question that the money will create jobs, he said, although many of those might actually be rehires of those who were laid off during the past year.

“If a contractor re-hires five people for a job then the DOT is going to count that as five new jobs,” Hendrix said. “These jobs are skilled jobs and it’s the people who have been laid off who are likely the ones to be rehired.”

LAW ENFORCEMENT
The Sumter Police Department also received a federal grant as did the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office from stimulus money.

While those funds will be used exclusively for equipment and new technology, Sheriff Anthony Dennis is applying for an additional grant that will allow him to hire new police officers.

“I think we’ll get some officers under the Cops Hiring and Recovery Program,” Dennis said. “Hopefully four, but a couple at the least.”

Blair Shaffer, Manning police chief, is working on four grant programs that could drastically help the department and create up to 10 jobs, he said. His first attempt will involve finding funding for a multi-jurisdictional drug task force.

“This will take one city officer and a few county officers and would take about $500,000,” he said.

Like most grants, it was available before stimulus money was freed up, but it was highly competitive. And, the city would have had to match the grant by 25 percent.

While waiting to hear about that award, Shaffer is writing an application for a grant that will go toward equipment and another that will fund more vehicles. But he’s also working on funding for a Drug Suppression Unit, which would operate in some of the city’s drug havens.

“We want to get four officers and work in high crime areas, working with drugs and with the Jurisdictional Task Force from the other grant,” Shaffer said. “This grant would pay for all their equipment and salaries for a three-year period, after which the county would have to pay if it didn’t want to discontinue it.”

Because that grant is competitive, the department might not get everything on its wish list.

“Even though I’m asking for four, they might look at us and think we only need two and just give us two,” Shaffer said. “That’s how these competitive grants work.”

HOUSING
Donna Lamar, executive director of the Sumter Housing Authority, also envisions specific numbers of new jobs. According to her calculations, if all the money that the housing authority has applied for is allocated, it will create approximately 53 new jobs. Some of those, however, could be allocated to the same worker, depending on which contractor is doing the hiring and the nature of the work.

CITY AND COUNTY
Unlike Lamar, city and county officials are hesitant to quantify new jobs that could be created from stimulus funding.

“Our goal is that the money given to us by the ARRA allocating agencies would be used not only to increases services to Sumter residents but also to aid in the maintenance and creation of local jobs,” said City Manager Deron McCormick, who added that funding is already beginning to come in, but that the city is still in the preliminary stages of budgeting “so the residents of Sumter can get the most out of the funds.”

Like McCormick, Lee County Consultant Bobby Boland also expects new jobs will be created when the county receives grant funding from the stimulus package. He hopes to use the funds for a sewer collection system near Exit 108 on Interstate 20 between Bishopville and Camden.

“This will help spur industrial and commercial development near the Interstate,” he said. “And we would expect this to create new jobs in the private sector.”

Manning is ready to get its share of the $2.8 billion pie coming to South Carolina towns.

“We’ve got some projects we’ve been trying to get off the ground for years — infrastructure projects, like the paving of roads or the building of a fire department that these grants will be awarded for,” said City Administrator Rebecca Rhodes during the Manning City Council meeting on March 16.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to receive some funds for those projects,” said Mayor Kevin Johnson. “They have to be shovel-ready, which means they have to be able to start now and then they have to be done within 18 months. I think we have some things around here we can come up with to use that money.”

Johnson added that the SCDOT had already committed to working on specific county roads, particularly the 16-mile stretch from Manning to Turbeville on Interstate 95.

EDUCATION
Things are more uncertain when it comes to education, where school superintendents are struggling just to keep the personnel they have, thanks to state budget cuts.

Dr. Rose Wilder, superintendent of Clarendon School District 1, is anxious to see what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act can do for her district, which she says will likely be the hardest hit in the county, especially when Federal-Mogul Corp. closes its doors next year. The company pays a whopping 10.5 percent in property taxes, which constitutes a large portion of funding for the district.

Moreover, if the General Assembly votes for the proposed cut in the base-student rate, District 1 will suffer even further.

“We’re looking at reducing days of non-essential personnel, but right now we haven’t determined what we might do in that situation,” Wilder said.

Since the school year began, no positions have been left unfilled in Sumter’s District 17. At the beginning of the year, however, it was forced to cut 34 job positions, 14 of which were teachers.

“Our main objective is job preservation,” said Superintendent Dr. Zona Jefferson about the anticipation of stimulus funding.

“Once we have clarity on the statewide funding flexibility and the federal stimulus funds, we will be in a better position to report on actual positions lost,” she added. “We are looking at the stimulus package and funding flexibility to save as many jobs as possible.”

Lee County School District Superintendent Dr. Cleo Richardson is facing the same dilemma. Although that district has received about $1 million less in state funding this year, it has not been forced to make staff reductions. However, stressed Richardson, “We can’t continue to receive state cuts and not affect personnel.”

Bottom line?

“The stimulus money is not going to create new jobs,” he said. “We just hope we can keep the jobs we have.”

According to Clyburn, it will all depend on Sanford.

“I was told that South Carolina will be saving around 7,500 jobs in the various teaching positions,” Clyburn said. “If the governor will stop playing politics ... While we’re having this constitutional argument, South Carolina is not getting the jobs and not getting the benefits. But either way, we will still be paying the taxes on a federal level. That’s a federal tax that everyone is going to have to pay.”

“It’s one of the most asinine arguments I’ve heard since I got in office,” he said. “It’s very clear that if we don’t take the money in South Carolina, it’s going to North Carolina or Georgia. And I’m not too sure that’s what South Carolina wants.”



Bobby Baker and Randy Burns contributed to this report.



Contact Staff Writer Annabelle Robertson at arobertson@theitem.com or (803) 774-1250.