Stimulus Spending on Highways… the Road to Nowhere

(By CHRIS ADAMS, McClatchy Newspapers) - Federal stimulus money to fix America's highways is stuck in the slow lane in some states, including a few that are suffering from some of the nation's highest unemployment rates.

In California, for example, where the 12.4 percent unemployment rate is the third worst in the country, officials are rolling their highway money out far more gradually. As a result, the Golden State is far behind other states in the percentage of projects it's started.

More than a year and a half after Congress passed a massive plan to stimulate the economy and get Americans working, California has yet to start 41 percent of its highway projects, according to a McClatchy analysis of the most recent federal data.