Quality of life monies or pork?
State Representative Jay Hoffman held a press conference in Collinsville yesterday to announce the grant monies being given to several metro east cities. $8.4 million will see its way to local communites while the rest of the $60 million from the federal government through the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program will see its way to other parts of the state.
While taxpayer watchdog groups like The National Taxpayers of Illinois are unhappy, calling this money pork barrel politics and wasteful spending, local officials are smiling. Hoffman deflects criticism by saying "I tend to believe that what this does for quality of life is well worth it."
In many ways he's correct. Most taxpayers who despise what they consider pork money in other parts of the country or state, enjoy the benefits it brings to their own city. If this weren't so, these grants would never see the light of day and elected state officials would be voted out of office instead of being regularly re-elected.
So what do we think about Fairview Heights receiving $864,390 in order to plant 443 trees, nearly 3,400 shrubs and 22,660 perennials along the busy intersection's off-ramps? Or Collinsville receiving $1.5 million to enhance its already enhanced Main Street? Or $2.7 million for a Madison County hiking and bike trail?
Is quality of life spending a reasonable use of tax dollars?
8 comments:
...in a state with greater than $40 billion in unfunded pension benefits?
This is just another example that our elected leaders (in both parties) aren't serious people.
This is an area where everyone should be able to come together and form a consensus.
Pork projects do little except to benefit the elected official. I think there should be a base level of infrastructure provided but something like beautification doesn't seem to fit the bill.
Remember, these are federal dollars given to the state for distribution. The feds gave us the pig and state officials simply carved it up. The feds won't allow the pork to feed pension underfunding, so that's a moot argument.
I thought it would be a good idea to rebate the 60 mil to everyone in the state. But then I calculated everybody would get about $5. Really makes ya realize how much money we give to the government???
Disregarding whether or not these are useful projects keep this in mind.
According to the program grant parameters announced last year, IDOT would announce the winners during the first week of November.
The first week came and went. Then, officials were told announcements would be made by the end of November.
By December, no one still hadn't heard anything.
Now eight months after the grants were supposed to be announced, here they are, just in time for the fall election.
Some of these grants will be used for economic development purposes (not just beautification) - in other words - help create new jobs, yet this administration once again showed how little they cared about governing.
They held up these programs for eight months so they could let their legislative allies get some credit by putting out their own news releases.
Now, many of these programs won't be ready until next year. So what if jobs aren't created this year or the year after. Who cares?
Certainly not the governor.
What was the process for deciding who gets to plant the trees?
Tell you the truth, I thought the ccc and the wpa were ok.
I think the entire state benefits from quality of life projects. In general, they make the state a better place to live, work, raise children, and therefore a better place to locate jobs.
What's wrong with citizens of a community getting together to form their own beautification projects and donating their time and materials? We do that in our own subdivision and everyone pitches in and it's a really pretty place.
We can't rely on the government for quality of life. They have to keep the infrastructure from collapsing. We need to take care of ourselves and help our own communities and neighbors. The more the government "helps" us, the more they expect to intrude on our lives.
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