WASHINGTON — Thanks to a sudden $140 million cash infusion, officials in Broward County, Florida, recently broke ground on a high-end hotel that will have...
State and local governments have spent nearly $1 billion worth of federal coronavirus aid on projects that have little to do with combating the pandemic.
The three distinctly different outlays have one thing in common: Each is among the dozens of projects that state and local governments across the United States are funding with federal coronavirus relief money despite having little to do with combating the pandemic, a review by The Associated Press has found.
Many of the projects identified by the AP echo pork-barrel spending disasters such as Alaska’s $398 million “Bridge to Nowhere,” which was canceled in 2007 after a public uproar. Tens of millions of dollars for tourism marketing campaigns in Puerto Rico , Washington, D.C. , and Tucson, Ariz. . The city of Alexandria, Va., also announced that it would spend $120,000 to give its tourism website a makeover.$5 million approved by Birmingham, Ala., to support the 2022 World Games. The event features niche sporting contests such as DanceSport, korfball and flying disc.$2 million to help Pottawattamie County, Iowa, purchase a privately owned ski area.
They also contest whether federal money is technically being used for the project. Broward County initially routed $140 million in federal coronavirus aid to the project, which ran against Treasury Department rules that generally bar spending the money on large capital projects.The agenda from a Feb. 22 county board meeting details how: In a back-to-back series of unopposed votes, commissioners clawed back the federal money they had given to the hotel.
“It’s ironic that this criticism emanates from the same congressional members who have brought back pork barrel earmarks,” said Dutchess County executive Marcus Molinaro. But groups that lobby on behalf of local governments in Washington say the spending rules were written permissively in order to give as much flexibility as possible.
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