Stimulus makes little dent in RI unemployment

PROVIDENCE—The flow of stimulus cash into Rhode Island has not offered much relief to the record number of unemployed workers searching for new jobs in a state with 13 percent unemployment, according to state reports released this week.

Gov. Don Carcieri’s administration said the funding created the equivalent of 1,703 jobs from mid-February through September. His administration has spent at least 16 percent of the roughly $511 million in federal stimulus funding under state control and subject to special reporting requirements.

But even as that money flowed, the state’s unemployment rate rose. The ranks of the jobless grew from 59,700 in February to 74,000 in September, according to state surveys.

Carcieri, a Republican, had earlier written a letter to President Barack Obama before the stimulus bill passed warning the program would not create immediate job growth. He expects many of the stimulus-related jobs will be temporary, his spokeswoman, Amy Kempe, said Friday.

“A lot of the stimulus money was designed to do nothing more than plug the budget holes that states have been facing,“ she said. “Very little of it goes to job creation.“

The figures released this week are one of the first glimpses into the effectiveness of a spending program meant to counteract one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression. By law, state governments must report on their stimulus spending every three months. The first reports to the federal government were due this month.

By late September, Rhode Island had spent at least $82.5 million of the $511 million in funding controlled by the state government, a spending rate of roughly 16 percent. That tally does not include several major pieces of stimulus funding, including extra spending on Medicaid and unemployment insurance.

Agencies under Carcieri’s control are trying to spend their stimulus cash as soon as possible, Kempe said. Congress designed some of the funding to arrive in later years, while in other cases, officials are still working out eligibility guidelines for grants.

Overall, fiscal experts estimate that Rhode Island will receive about $1.1 billion in total stimulus cash.