Mayors renew call for Main Street recovery plan
On Monday, the mayors of the nation’s largest cities renewed their calls for President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to pass a Main Street stimulus package in the first 100 days of the new administration. Washington-based U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) President and Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told members of Congress that “ready-to-go” infrastructure projects in various cities could create thousands of jobs if local governments received emergency federal funding.
In its second report on the infrastructure projects, USCM found that 427 cities contained a total of 11,391 such projects that would cost $73 billion and would create 847,641 jobs. The projects are in 10 different sectors, including transit, highway infrastructure, green jobs, school modernization, public safety and public housing. “We stand ready to help [Obama] and the Congress create sustainable jobs that fix our crumbling infrastructure and promote energy independence,” Diaz said in a statement. “But, to work, we must make sure that the funding is spent quickly and not stuck in federal or state bureaucracies.”
Read the entire statement on USCM’s Web site.