Nassau finally gets nod to begin road work

WASHINGTON -- Nassau County has gotten the state's go-ahead to start its last three stimulus-funded road projects -- a year and a half after it won $5.3 million in federal money by saying they were "shovel ready."

The work, scheduled to begin soon, is hardly groundbreaking: It involves painting lines and putting other traffic markings on roadways including Old Country Road in Mineola and Garden City, and Forest Avenue in Oyster Bay, according to records.

But bureaucratic hurdles, along with wrangling over inspections of the work, lasted from late 2009 until last September -- and that in turn prompted another delay.

"September is too late in the season to start a multimillion-dollar pavement marking project, so we held off until this year," said Brian Nevin, spokesman for County Executive Edward Mangano.

Problems with stimulus

The slow start is emblematic of problems that have beset the Obama administration's attempt, launched in early 2009, to jump-start the economy with a quick infusion of money for ready-to-start projects under the $787-billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

Moreover, inaccurate and contradictory reporting of the status of the projects also reveals shortcomings in the act's mission to make the spending of stimulus money clear to taxpayers.

The New York State Department of Transportation reports that it is responsible for overseeing $1 billion in stimulus funds for 439 highway and road projects -- and that all the funds have been obligated and work had started on 423 of them as of March 31, 2011.

But the state and local governments have completed just 286 of the projects, for which they spent $406 million in stimulus funds, the reports show.

"It's probably shocking to the public how long it takes to put some of these things together," said Carol Breen, a transportation department spokeswoman.

"We try to move as many along as possible," she said of the stimulus projects.

Breen said the state spent a long time finding suitable projects, which then had to go through design, bidding and contracting approval processes before work could begin.

Nassau and Suffolk counties won nearly $160 million in stimulus funding for 28 road projects in 2009.

Nine of the projects have been completed, at a cost of $37 million, state records show.

With the impending start of the Nassau work, 18 projects funded with $118.4 million in stimulus funds will be under way, with completion dates this year or early next year.

Riverhead bike path last

Only one other Long Island project hasn't begun: a $3.1-million contract to construct a bicycle/pedestrian path in Riverhead Town. The 13-mile project would fill in existing bike routes from Calverton to the Southold town line.

Christina Kempner, director of Riverhead's Community Development Agency, said because many of the proposed bicycle paths were along small rural roads, it added to the design time. Final coordination with the state DOT is nearly complete and bids are expected to go out in about a month, Kempner said.

The federal stimulus law was designed to boost or save jobs and, in its reporting, New York tracks the size of payrolls for individual projects. On Long Island, the total so far is $21.8 million for 486,454 hours of work.

For instance, more than 800 workers had jobs on stimulus projects last July and August; the number has fallen this year.

"We're at the tail end of all of the stimulus projects," said Suffolk County Department of Public Works director Gilbert Anderson, adding that all will be finished this year.

Reporting inaccuracies

But it isn't always possible to get accurate information about the status of projects.

Federal and New York State websites sometimes provide contradictory and inaccurate information, officials conceded.

For instance, the federal website Recovery.gov posted quarterly updates as of March 31, 2011, showing Nassau County had not started eight projects that won $17 million in stimulus funds in 2009.

The New York State comptroller's website showed that the contracts for two of the unfinished projects had expired at the end of 2010.

Breen said both of those reports are wrong. She blamed a reporting error for some mistakes, and Nassau County for failing to report the status of some projects accurately.

"We hadn't kept our information up-to-date so that when we sent it to the feds they weren't updated," she said.

Mike Martino, spokesman for the Nassau Department of Public Works, noted that after projects were approved the county had "a very short and specific time frame" to bid and award them. He said that, "in several instances, zeroes were reported in that time frame since no money was spent while the jobs were awarded and start dates established."

However, "every [stimulus] dollar that the county has utilized has been accurately reported," Martino said.

With Mitchell Freedman