Gulf Coast Leaders Feel Shortchanged By Economic Stimulus Package

Some Gulf Coast leaders are feeling shortchanged on the lack of transportation infrastructure projects they’ll be seeing from the economic stimulus package. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports.

Mississippi will receive more than 350 million dollars for transportation projects through the economic stimulus plan. Of that money just under 250 million dollars will be given to the Mississippi Department of Transportation. One of the criteria for use of that funding is that the money goes to economically distressed communities. This leaves out Harrison and Hancock County on the coast, and it has five of the six cities in those counties upset. Ryan LaFontaine is Public Information Officer for Gulfport,

“We were hurting before the hurricane and then as we are trying to get off our knees from the hurricane we are hit with the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. To us it looks like we are economically distressed and there must be some sort of flaw in the system, in the criteria that they are using to make that determination.”

MDOT deputy executive director Melinda McGrath says there is no flaw in the system, and that being an economically distressed community was only one of the criteria, along with maximizing job and economic benefits, and expeditious project delivery. The real problem, she says, is that the Coast just didn’t have any shovel ready projects because there has been so much done there in the past few years,

“We’ve spent over a billion dollars on the Gulf Coast since Katrina, and we have other needs throughout the state of Mississippi.”

But that doesn’t mean the Gulf Coast will miss out completely. The stimulus package calls for 30 percent of that 350 million dollars in transportation infrastructure funding to go to metropolitan planning organizations. The Coastal counties will receive just over 9.5 million dollars from that.