Go to DC on business these days and times are good. Money is flowing like bourbon and the bars and restaurants are crowded. Government is its business and business is good. Federal contractors are also making out like the proverbial bandits – that stimulus money’s gotta go somewhere. But it’s interesting how the money’s being spent. Contractors enter into contracts to hand out the dole while getting a slice for themselves. And guess what? The money tends to go to the same places it usually goes, not to communities that are the hardest hit. From today’s Washington Post:
As struggling communities around the country wait for more help from the $787 billion stimulus package, one region is already basking in its largess: the government-contractor nexus that is metropolitan Washington.
Reports from stimulus recipients show that a sizable sum has gone to federal contractors in the Washington area who are helping implement the initiative — in effect, they are being paid a hefty slice of the money to help spend the rest of it.
The contractors’ work hardly differs from the basic operations of the federal departments hiring them. The Energy Department is paying Technology & Management Services, a Gaithersburg firm, $6.9 million to review applications for renewable energy loan guarantees. The Department of Homeland Security awarded Deloitte Consulting’s Arlington branch $8.6 million to provide “program management and support” for the stimulus plan’s $1 billion airport security initiative, and gave McKing Consulting, a Fairfax firm, a $1.5 million contract to review applications for fire department construction funding.
Held against the total stimulus package, the contracts represent a relatively small portion of spending. But they help explain why the Washington area is weathering the recession so well. And, as President Obama convenes a jobs summit Thursday to discuss lagging employment, the contracts raise questions about whether enough funding is getting to areas suffering the most.
“The way it’s set up, the money’s largely going to places where it’s always been going,” said Karl Stauber, a former undersecretary for rural development in the Agriculture Department who is now director of the Danville Regional Foundation in struggling southern Virginia. “We need to invest stimulus dollars in ways that help create new competitive advantage in places that are now being left behind.”
Of the stimulus grants and contracts awarded so far, the District has received nearly 10 times as much per capita as the national average, and Maryland has received more per capita than much harder-hit states, among them Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio. Virginia’s statewide average is relatively low, but of the 496 stimulus contracts the state has received, two-thirds of them, with a total value of $562 million, have gone to Northern Virginia, home to hundreds of contractors.
Feeling stimulated yet?
