By acting Just. Like. This.
A few area cities have found an alternate way to use their federal stimulus money: selling it to other cities for cash.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority has allocated a minimum of $500,000 in federal stimulus funds to each of the 88 cities in the county for transportation-related projects. Unincorporated areas will benefit, too.
Several smaller cities, some without shovel-ready projects, are making deals with others to sell or swap such funds and replenish their general funds.
“The best way to see this is as a huge windfall for us because we do have the flexibility of using the general fund money now,” city manager Shauna Clark of La Habra Heights said.
The city of Bradbury, with a population of roughly 1,000, is working on a deal to sell its $500,000 share of federal funding doled out by the MTA to the city of Torrance for $315,000 in cash for its general fund, according to Torrance officials.
Torrance, which was allocated $2.9 million by the MTA, plans to use the extra funds for a variety of street improvement projects, including a major reconstruction and expansion of Crenshaw Boulevard, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, said city manager LeRoy Jackson.
La Habra Heights, a city of 6,000, has sold its $500,000 in federal funds to the city of Westlake Village for $310,000 cash. Irwindale, population 1,500, also sold its $500,000 to Westlake Village, for $325,000 cash.
What? No!
Every official who OK’d these transfers should be tried and jailed for misappropriation of grant money. This is like selling food stamps for drug money.
How can this not be illegal?
Found via RTftWC
Well, this information IS important, because it shows that the municipalities, fellow governments to Big Brother that they all are, and definitely fellow hogs at the trough, still discount the US dollar about a third.
THAT shows that maybe, just maybe, a little disbelief is creeping in about the Stimulus. If the Federal Gov’t actually HAD “full faith and credit” etc, their dollars would each be worth a dollar, not sixty to sixty-five cents.