Where is all of Obama’s stimulus money going?

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The Act explicitly lists the following five purposes of the Act:

• To preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery.
• To assist those most impacted by the recession.
• To provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring technological advances in science and health.
• To invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits.
• To stabilize State and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases.

Federal, state, county, and city resources are now dedicated to ARRA opportunities (all of the websites noted below use the term "opportunities" to describe projects funded by ARRA).

Federal business opportunities are available at FBO.gov, which provides extensive search options to find Federal contracts. A simple search for California opportunities as of today resulted in 160 projects that many of our clients may be interested in bidding on. Opportunities that are funded by ARRA are noted as such.

California's governor and the city of San Francisco have created dedicated agencies and websites that provide information about the impact of ARRA. Contra Costa County and local cities have also added links and information to their existing websites about ARRA opportunities.

Governor Schwarzenegger has created the California Recovery Task Force, which will be tracking ARRA funds. The Task Force's website provides information so that Californians can access the stimulus money. The site includes information on how to bid for contracts, apply for grants, and get some tax relief . We highly recommend that you check out this site.

San Francisco's Office of Economic and Workforce Development provides information for small businesses owners. Its website is jam-packed with business assistance information such as tax credits and incentives, construction development in the pipeline, neighborhood revitalization projects, and workforce development. The site has links to other city resources that may be helpful to you and your business.

Contra Costa County has expanded its website to provide information about ARRA. For the most part, the site encourages you to search for local opportunities at FedBizOpps.gov and Grants.gov. However, we found that individual cities in Contra Costa County, such as Walnut Creek, are predominately displaying RFPs for ARRA projects on their homepages, rather than making you go search for them.

If you become aware of other resources that provide local ARRA opportunities, please email them to lsilva@ty-llp.com and we will get them posted for all of our readers to explore.