Budget Cuts

Jacob Schmied
Staff Reporter

State officials say federal stimulus spending saved or created the equivalent of about 7,200 full-time jobs in Colorado the final three months of last year. State officials also said that roughly 70 percent of the jobs were positions retained in higher education and state prisons.
"The impact on the state is enormous," said Don Elliman, chairman of the Colorado Economic Recovery and Accountability Board.
A new state report says that highway and transit projects created the equivalent of about 610 full-time positions. Science and research accounted for 281 jobs and home weatherization created 175 positions.
Elliman said he expects the effects of stimulus spending to accelerate this spring. State agencies have spent only about 40 percent of the $1.6 billion they will eventually get in federal stimulus grants, he said.
"The job impacts should peak this summer as construction ramps up," Elliman said.
Harold Metz is among the Coloradans helped by the stimulus funds. He said during the news conference with Elliman that he got a job as a supervisor on weatherization projects in the Colorado Springs area after being losing his construction job at age 65.
"I was a senior out of work looking for a job," Metz said.
Stimulus money was spent on virtually everything. $584 million was spent on transportation improvement, which included improvements to roads and bussing routes. Both of these in turn created or saved jobs, which was the main goal of the stimulus plan. $740 million went directly to job training and unemployment benefits, and nearly $15 million was spent on small business loans in Adams County alone. The most spending to an area was $1.08 billion for tax cuts and Social Security.
There was also a report released showing that Colorado’s websites designed to disseminate information about its share of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), are dramatically better than most other state’s websites.
“Colorado should feel proud that we are a leader when it comes to the transparency of the stimulus spending in our state.” said Danny Katz, Director of Colorado Public Interest Research Group. “We are talking about billions of dollars and everyone in the state needs to know where that money is going and what it is accomplishing.”
But state Rep. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, said the federal money is just a temporary way to preserve government jobs and avoid hard choices rather than a way to jump-start the economy.
"You can bring in billions of dollars of federal money for government jobs and prop them up, while the rest of the economy and employment is going down," said Lambert, a member of the Legislature's budget committee. "It's not sustainable."