This week Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields (R - St. Joe) created the "Senate Select Committee on Oversight of Federal Stimulus Plan." Thirteen senators were appointed to the committee including three Democrats -- Victor Callahan (D - Independence), Rita Heard Days (D - St. Louis County) and me.
The committee is charged with studying and analyzing strategies for securing the maximum amount of federal dollars for Missouri from the anticipated federal economic stimulus plan of 2009.
Each Senator is assigned a substantive issue to study. For instance, Senator Callahan is labor and Senator Days is housing and urban development. I am charged with "science."
The first hearing is Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 in Senate Committee Room 1.
The stimulus package is anticipated to include nearly $1 trillion (with a "T") nationwide. How would you spend the money?
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6 comments:
Hi Jolie,
Please, please, please - focus on *existing* infrastructure. The only new we should be adding in Missouri are transit projects. We have a tremendous problem already in that we cannot maintain what we already have built, and new road construction will only exacerbate that problem. Any stimulus funds should go towards making the use of our existing infrastructure more efficient - repairing roads & bridges, and improving transit service. Honesly, this is not just an issue for our cities - the rural areas and small towns have the same concerns.
Thanks for your time,
Kevin Klinkenberg
Hi Jolie -
Kansas City needs funding for job training and job placement for individuals facing serious barriers to employment (single parents, young adults living at or below the FPL, ex-offenders, etc). We also could use low-income housing credits for some of our distressed neighborhoods (Washington Weatley, Blue Hills and Ivanhoe come to mind). I've heard alot about physical infrastructure but i also hope the state considers the need to build up the technological infrastructure in areas of the urban core that lack broadband internet access. Just a couple of things I've been hearing in the community.
Thanks,
Jerry
I agree with Kevin. Let's maintain the roads we have and focus on the next type of mass transit and enabling active transportation. Building new highways only makes a liability for taxpayers further down the line.
Just give the money back to Missouri taxpayers directly and let us decide individually. p.s. Thanks for setting a good example to your fellow lawmakers by maintaining a blog!
Science, eh?
We could build a biofuel energy research center in Kansas City which would be overseen by the USDA. There's a lot of cheap real estate just north of the Federal Complex at Bannister and Troost. It'd be relatively close to the USDA office on Ward Parkway, as well as close to the Mazuma credit union. It's infrastructure/construction jobs followed by green jobs. It's urban development in a blighted area. (South Troost is like an unholy marriage of the hood and the boonies.) Pretty much everything you could want in an economic stimulus project, isn't it?
And speaking of filling up the dead space on south Troost, why not put up some wind turbines there? I know that wind turbines are typically placed in rural areas, but urban wind energy could be feasible. They have one in Toronto: http://www.windshare.ca/explace/the_wind_turbine.html
Plop 'em all over the city. There's no shortage of large vacant spaces to put them. It's green infrastructure jobs and it'd make our cityscape pretty cool-looking.
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