Amid N.Y.’s Budget Crisis, a Scramble to Spend Billions (NYT 3/4)

[Muttocracy]

Amid N.Y.’s Budget Crisis, a Scramble to Spend Billions

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/nyregion/05albany.html

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: March 4, 2009

ALBANY — Throughout the Capitol, from the vaulted Assembly chamber to the first-floor cubicles of the Budget Division, officials are frantically slashing budgets, trimming headcounts and freezing salaries to deal with the worst fiscal crisis in decades.

But in Room 246, a high-ceilinged suite recently turned over to Gov. David A. Paterson’s new economic recovery cabinet, there is a different problem to tackle, courtesy of the federal stimulus passed last month: How to spend billions of dollars as quickly as possible.

Nearly every day, officials from 20 agencies meet there to sift through hundreds of proposals, from waste-treatment plants to courthouses to emergency wireless systems. On one wall is a map of New York’s 62 counties, marked with the number of projects each has submitted for approval. On another is a list of the pools of federal money available to the state: $404 million to weatherize homes, $1 billion for highways and bridges, even $75 million for nuclear waste cleanup.

“It’s better than being on the other side,” said Timothy J. Gilchrist, in between hurried bites of a salad. As the senior adviser for infrastructure and transportation, Mr. Gilchrist was appointed by the governor to oversee the distribution of the federal funds. “I’m Captain Asphalt,” he said.

While the stimulus package includes money that New York and other states can use to close their budget deficits, much of it is reserved for large-scale capital projects, money that must be spent quickly — in some cases in a few months — to help jump-start the economy.
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