DENVER — Rolling your eyes at the large highway signs promoting Colorado’s stimulus spending “Putting America To Work” at road construction sites?
State highway officials insist the promotional signs are required and will stay up — despite complaints from Republicans that the signs amount to political boosterism for a stimulus spending package driven by ruling Democrats in Washington.
There are dozens of the signs on road construction projects across the state saying the projects are funded by the mammoth $787 billion federal stimulus package. Medium-sized signs cost about $750 to $1,250, with large signs costing up to $2,000.
The Colorado Department of Transportation doesn’t have an exact figure for how much stimulus money has been spent on the signs. That’s because the signs are a mandatory part of the overall road bids and not separated from other required signs on construction projects.
CDOT spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said federal highways authorities “strongly encouraged” the signs, so state guidelines include them.
Colorado has 37 stimulus-funded roads projects under construction or soon to be under construction, with most projects having two signs, one in each direction. If each project used two medium-sized signs, taxpayers will have spent roughly $55,000 for the Colorado signs.
It’s a small expense compared to the $191 million in stimulus money spent on road and bridge projects so far in Colorado. But some critics of the stimulus package call the stimulus signs a thinly veiled advertisement for the spending.
“The fact is those signs have little utility other than advertising for politicians at taxpayer’s expense,” said Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican from a suburban Denver district. Coffman met earlier this month with federal accounting authorities in Denver about the signs and learned they can cost up to $2,000.
“There are countless more important things that money could be used for, and it’s a slap in the face to the American people,” Coffman said of the signs.
The signs also raised the ire of Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who tried and failed this month to ban the use of stimulus money on the signs. Last week Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., criticized the signs on the House floor, calling them “the worst of political credit-taking.”
But in Colorado, Stegman insists highway authorities were just following directions from federal highway authorities in requiring the signs. Federal authorities have said repeatedly that taxpayers should know how stimulus dollars are being spent. The signs include an address for a federal recovery Web site where taxpayers can report fraud.
“They just wanted recognition on the funding,” Stegman said.
Colorado contractors aren’t punished if they deem road conditions make it unsafe to put up the signs, she said. Only a handful of Colorado motorists have complained, Stegman said. And she pointed out that the business of making the signs is falling to the private sector, same as making the roads.
“These are signs made by small businesses,” she said.
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