$111 Million in stimulus Has Only Created 55 Jobs So Far

[abecx]

http://patterico.com/2010/09/16/your-st ... n-per-job/

It’s the largest city audit of stimulus dollars to date, and the results aren’t pretty:

CITY CONTROLLER RELEASES AUDITS OF HOW LOS ANGELES HAS USED FEDERAL STIMULUS MONEY

$111 Million in ARRA Funds Has Only Created 55 Jobs So Far

Continuing her efforts to ensure that taxpayer money is spent efficiently and effectively, City Controller Wendy Greuel released two audits today of how the City of Los Angeles has used American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds. The audits looked at the how the two departments that have received the largest amount of ARRA funding so far – the Department of Transportation (LADOT) and the Department of Public Works (DPW) – have used those funds and how many jobs were created. Los Angeles becomes the largest City in America to conduct an audit of how ARRA funds have been expended.

DPW has received $70.65 million and created or retained 45.46 jobs, though they are expected to create 238 jobs overall (the fraction of a job created or retained correlates to the number of actual hours works). LADOT has been awarded $40.8 million and created or retained 9 jobs, though they are expected to create 26 jobs overall. Overall, the Departments have received $111 million in federal stimulus funds out of the $594 million the City has been awarded so far and created or retained 54.46 jobs.

$111 million for 55 jobs. That’s $2 million per job.

Even if you look at the number of jobs they expect to create (“or save”), it’s only 264. $111 million for 264 jobs is about $420,454 per job.

Hey, can you guys create a 56th job for me? I could use $2 million.

Failing that, can you return my tax dollars that you wasted?

UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for the link, and congratulations to Drew for getting his comment quoted!

[Firecrest]

Grats, Drew.

[jackslammer]

Today is the beginning of a new fiscal year, and considering that the City is currently facing a multi-million dollar long-term budget deficit, we need all the revenue we can get. However, the results of my latest audit about the City's billing and collections practices show that this critical part of City government is not working as it should.

Our audit examined six major departments who do a lot of the City's billing, such as the Transportation and Fire departments. Within these six departments, only 53% of the money the City billed over the course of a year was actually collected. These departments billed a total of $553.4 million for fiscal year 2008-09, but only $293 million was collected, which means $260 million from these six departments alone went uncollected. That is a rate which is unsustainable for the City.

The audit is actually a follow-up to another audit from 2007, in which the Controller's office recommended 35 different proposals to improve the City's policies and increase revenue. Since 2007, 64% of the recommendations have been implemented, which is great. However, the collection rate has only gone up a mere 1% from the 52% in 2007. That's simply unacceptable, especially since the most important recommendation from the 2007 audit--to implement a centralized collection process--has not yet happened. Furthermore, city departments need to be held accountable about forwarding bills for collection.

There's a lot of room for improvement for billing and collections in the City and after three years, more progress must be seen. Collecting more money is not going to close our entire budget deficit alone, but the City needs every dollar it is owed, and any uncollected money widens our budget deficit and forces even more cuts to services.

[CAN]

PUBLIC OFFICIALS ARE NOT OVERPAID.

[Nouhstekehue]

Roads are made of concrete, not man-hours.

However, not submitting the bill just sounds lazy, like free money is something that's hard to give a damn about these days :\

[Sanderz]

The thing about roads is that you can only do so much work at one time or it fucks up the daily commute to and from work. In Kansas City theres two interstate highways and two state highways that go from the eastside to downtown. They've been working on the two state highways this year and actually closed one completely. One of the interstates had a bridge collapse and I ended up spending an additional 20 minutes getting to work since all the other fucking roads are closed.

Also, most of the work is done by heavy machinery, so you only need one person for the dump truck, the roller, the crane, etc. Most of the money goes to materials and planning not the labor. I actually think MODOT is dragging out one of the state highway work for jobs because they're working on 10-15 miles of highway at the same time (its going from a hilly two lane to a level four lane) and they've finished none of it in the past 4 months.

The same thing applies to public works as well, but go ahead and cry about spending money on infrastructure. The money should be used to build a fence for the mexican border right?

[jackslammer]

The ARRA is more of a life preserver than stimulus for California since they can't even afford to employ half their workforce, so the bill kept hundreds of thousands of public workers employed.

However my biggest bitch about Democrats, especially the California Democrats, is them being in fucking bed with the Departments of Correction, Education, Transportation, etc. unions. I can complain all I want about the gross lobbying that Republicans receive from the oil industry, big pharma, tobacco, NRA, etc. but Democrats get just as much influence and wasted expenditure from the aforementioned unions.

California pensions are underfunded by hundreds of billions yet there are tens of thousands of retired public workers in California receiving $100,000 a year or more in pensions! Retired prison guards, elementary school teachers, traffic controllers, etc. all raking in more than $10,000 a month!

Here is a list of those receiving $100,000+ pensions in California: http://database.californiapensionreform ... le=calpers

I hate linking things from FOX but unfortunately this is a fairly accurate summary of what is going on in California.

[Firecrest]

Wow. That's fucking ridiculous.

[Zsigmond]

Ridiculous post jack... absolutely sick. Quick Solution: I think we should just execute people over 69 (good number) and the unemployed. thoughts?

[Sanderz]

The real solution is limit government relief by duration. Make it 15 years per person, so that means you could only get so much unemployment and social security. If they live over 75, they should have enough money to take care of themselves.