Columbia’s Bailout Boondoggling

In an example of the bailout math that’s taking place in city governments all across the country, Columbia S.C. has made a list and checked it twice.

According to city leaders, they’ve got about $250 million worth of projects that they would use federal bailout money on, creating 2,700 predominately construction jobs.

Basically, it’s a bunch of typical overpriced municipal junk with no measurable long-term benefit to the economy, but hey – that’s sort of how government interventionism works.

Just make sure the bureaucrats have plenty of favors to dole out while the rest of us continue to take it up the rear.

Anyway, for the complete list of projects and the construction jobs attached to them, click here.

Numerous other municipalities across the nation are sending similar bailout wish lists to Washington, which is all but guaranteed to grant them (with non-existent money, of course).

Yet there’s something about Columbia’s list that strikes us as particularly ho-hum.

There’s plenty of water and sewer stuff, “street-scaping” and of course the requisite “parks in low-income neighborhoods,” but seriously people … how in the hell is any of that going to create even one permanent job?

We know the City of Columbia manages its money about as well as Tyrone Biggums, but let’s think about this spending list for a second.

Even if South Carolina’s state capital is “broke as a joke,” should we really spend $250 million on 2,700 temporary jobs?

Plus – and we hate to be blunt about this – but there’s a lot of low income housing stuff in here (well, with the exception of $4.5 million for BridgePointe condos), which the last time we checked was what got us in this mess in the first place?

Seriously, Mayor Bob.

Just because the New York Times went and called your city the “face of the recession” is no reason to start throwing this kind of cash around on a bunch of worthless crap that won’t do anything in the long run to improve your job situation.

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