Quarter of state's stimulus cash has been spent so far

OLYMPIA — Eight months after Congress approved a massive stimulus package to help pull the country out of recession, only a little over a quarter of the roughly $6 billion awarded to Washington state has been spent.

State and federal officials estimate around $1.6 billion of the aid has been used so far in Washington state at the local, state and federal level. The remainder will be paid out in the coming months.

The preliminary figures don't include the "cash for clunkers" program and other federal tax incentives and rebates.

Perhaps the biggest impact to date has been to stanch the bleeding in the state economy. The money helped shore up state services, and millions are being spent on projects from rebuilding highways to cleaning up nuclear waste.

"The recession would have been worse, and the state budget situation would have been much worse in this state without this money," said Victor Moore, the governor's budget director.

Even with the federal money, the Legislature had to cut spending by several billion dollars earlier this year to balance the budget. "As bad as the (cuts) were, they would have been much more dramatic" without the aid, Moore said.

Much of the federal funding was intended to be spent over two years, and in some cases it just takes time to move that much money through the system and award contracts, according to the Governor's Office, which notes that that's also true nationally.

Moore's office estimates federal aid by now has saved or created around 33,000 jobs statewide. The majority, nearly three-quarters, are teaching positions funded by the state.

However, it's difficult to tell how many jobs really have been created or saved, or the overall impact of the federal aid on the economy.

For example, although the state projects the money saved more than 24,000 teaching jobs, that presumes the Legislature would have cut the K-12 funding for those jobs without the federal aid.

Yet the state's constitution protects most state funding for public schools. Lawmakers may have been forced to cut other parts of the state budget to free up money for education. So it's not clear how many teaching jobs were really at risk.

When it comes to transportation projects, the state expects to spend more than $300 million in federal stimulus money during the current two-year budget. But that amount is dwarfed by the nearly $4 billion in other highway projects moving ahead during the same time period.

The federal money happens to coincide with a peak in highway spending using state gas-tax funding approved by voters during the past several years.

Bruce Vetch, owner of Vetch Construction, spent the past four months replacing concrete pavement along a three-mile stretch of Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass. The $3 million project, paid with federal stimulus money, employed 22 people at its peak, he said.

Vetch said he had other projects going as well, so he and his workers would not have been unemployed if the federal money had not come along. "We went from being busy for the summer, to being really busy with this additional project," he said.

"Some of the guys, like my foreman, who maybe typically would have been getting 40 or 50 hours a week on his paycheck maybe got a lot of checks with 60 or 65 hours," Vetch said. "That's extra money they can put away for when they are a little slower in the winter."

From Moore's perspective, the federal highway dollars means "more money in the economy. We're hiring people to do that work," he said. "We're not going to sneeze at that kind of money."

At the Hanford nuclear reservation, federal officials estimate that nearly $2 billion in stimulus dollars have saved or created around 2,400 jobs. The money is being used to accelerate continuing cleanup of nuclear waste.

The state's chief economist, Arun Raha, said that while it's difficult to sort out the impact the stimulus package is having, "the money is creating jobs. It prevents a layoff, or creates a job."

He said the maximum impact of the stimulus spending will be felt by the third quarter of 2010.

Andrew Garber: 360-236-8266 or agarber@seattletimes.com