By Adam Wise

The transportation industry and elected officials are withholding optimism about President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan, which includes $60 billion for road projects, until more particulars are revealed.

“The faith in the government, especially Congress, is pretty low,” said Larry Usack, executive vice president of Waukesha-based Payne & Dolan Inc. “Obviously our industry could use some help, but how do you bring everybody together?”

Although Pat Goss, executive director of the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association, said it’s great to have a national leader talking about the importance of infrastructure investment, the devil will be in the details of whether Wisconsin can reap the benefits of Obama’s plan.

“What are the criteria?” he asked. “How will they pick the projects, and will Wisconsin be able to compete in whatever they propose? Without knowing the details or knowing what the priorities will be, I don’t know if Wisconsin will fare well.”

Obama’s plan would include $50 billion for road and bridge projects, according to his administration, while also creating a $10 billion infrastructure bank supported by private-sector money. The proposal focuses heavily on company tax breaks, but also includes $45 billion for modernizing and rehabilitating schools and vacant properties.

Obama has said the money, if approved by Congress, will jumpstart thousands of projects in the country.

“No more earmarks; no more boondoggles; no more bridges to nowhere,” he said in a speech Thursday. “We’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it will do for the economy.”

The proposal heads to Congress this month.

How Wisconsin could benefit from the package is unknown at this point. WisDOT Spokeswoman Peg Schmitt said Friday the agency has not received information from the federal government as to how the proposed aid would flow to states.

Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., said investing in the country’s roads is one of the quickest ways to help the economy bounce back.

“We have a 20th century infrastructure that is crumbling before our eyes,” he said.

“This can create jobs in the short-term while modernizing our roads, bridges, ports and airports.”

But to transportation builders, an industry suffering from an unemployment rate that’s about twice the national average of 9 percent, Goss said, Obama’s proposal sounds a lot like the national stimulus bill of 2009.

“I’ll hearken back to the original stimulus bill,” he said, “which unfortunately has been misconceived significantly by the general public that there was this massive infrastructure investment, and it wasn’t.

“This proposal, like the stimulus, is more about saving people’s jobs,” Goss added.

More than $50 billion has been paid in stimulus money for transportation and infrastructure projects, according to figures from the U.S. government. But an influx of cash will not be a cureall, Goss said.

“You’re not going to see unemployment go from 20 percent to 5 percent,” he said, “it’s going to take more than this.”

While he wouldn’t provide specific numbers, Usack said Payne & Dolan has cut its workforce in recent years. The 2009 stimulus only helped keep jobs, he said, not create them.

The industry didn’t profit from the previous fiscal shot in the arm because of a lack of accountability, said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. Johnson said he can’t support Obama’s proposal until seeing a specific plan to determine what projects are paid for.

“Our infrastructure system is 60-years-old-plus. We need to invest, but I don’t see a real rigorous process of determining what you spend it on and on what priority basis,” he said. “On a project-by-project basis I want to see the entire list; I don’t want to be considering a big whole chunk of money they say they’ll spend on infrastructure.”

While Obama’s plan will be vetted by Congress this month, Kind, who said he expects bipartisan support, said members of the House and Senate control how quickly the money can reach builders.

“I would like to see it done sooner rather than later,” he said. “I would hope in the coming weeks committees will look at the proposals and if congressional leadership supports it, they can expedite this and make it happen.”

But until a system is in place to guarantee worthwhile projects are receiving the money, Johnson said he can’t support the measure.

“The concern is that we’d be sitting here, a year or two later, another $450 billion in the hole and nothing to show for it,” he said. “No new job creation, minimum infrastructure spending at best and we just totally wasted the money.

“In an age when we are incurring annual deficits in excess of $1 trillion, we have to be looking at everything and making sure it’s money well spent.”

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