Bridge to Somewhere: Stimulus money looking for a way to an NFL owner’s parking lot

If residents of Bellingham, Mass., longed for a smoother commute to work, they can thank the New England Patriots for making that wish go up in stimulus-funded smoke.

A road rebuilding project paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in Bellingham and several other Massachusetts cities was passed up recently when state officials said $9 million of federal stimulus money was better served on a pedestrian bridge connecting two parking lots near Gillette Stadium, home of the NFL’s Patriots.

So instead of improving public roads for everyone’s benefit, stimulus money will help football fans holding tickets costing an average of $117 walk from one privately-owned parking lot near a stadium to another, which they do for eight regular season home games a year.

Those parking lots are owned by Robert Kraft, a billionaire who owns the NFL’s most successful franchise in the last decade. Too bad for the residents of Bellingham, who on average spend 31 minutes commuting by car to get to their jobs, above the national median of 25 minutes. They’ll get to work without the benefit of new roads while Patriots fans will get the important pleasure of walking on a $9 million bridge funded by federal legislation that was intended to rebuild national infrastructure and put people to work.

Kraft, whose own net worth is in excess of $1.5 billion, has angled for public financing for this $9 million bridge all year, even going for state-level financing at one point, according to these public meeting minutes in Foxborough, Mass.

Many aspects of this seem odd, not the least of which are the lengths that state officials who are responsible for this decision went to make this deal happen and then justify it.

First, how the deal was made: According to The Boston Globe, federally-funded transportation projects in Massachusetts normally have to gain approval by two sets of professional planners. Not the case with this bridge, which got rushed through a singular planning board, presumably at the behest of Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration (In fairness, this project hasn’t gotten final approval, but the Patrick administration seems to be gunning for this project to get done).

That’s one thing — now suspend disbelief as officials rationalize the project. They seem to try to preempt the argument that this project serves private interests by pointing out that it connects two public sidewalks.

There you have it — justified!

The same Boston Globe article quotes the state’s secretary of housing and economic development complaining that Massachusetts keeps losing companies that can get bigger subsidies in places like North Carolina and Texas.

OK, so in other words, if the feds won’t pony up for a minor improvement between parking lots near an NFL organization that makes enough money to pay one of its employees (Randy Moss) $14 million in one year, it’s symptomatic of the greater Boston area’s penchant for losing business opportunities. That notwithstanding the fact that Boston is a huge city with several major top-flight universities (Harvard, Boston College) and other major businesses (Bose Corp., Boston Scientific) in its vicinity.

Maybe this idea would fly if ARRA was passed with the idea that it was a business incentive and retention tool. But it’s not. At least not according to Recovery.gov, the tracking Web site of stimulus dollars.

A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:

• Create new jobs as well as save existing ones
• Spur economic activity and invest in long-term economic growth
• Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending

It’s hard to see how this $9 million bridge accomplishes the first two stated goals of ARRA, and it’s harder still to see how it doesn’t fly in the face of the third.