Dig deep into how volume is. Lawmakers want federal COVID relief money – CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) – “Help is here,” President Joe Biden said in March as he celebrated the approval of billions of dollars in aid to states to help repair the economic and social damage. of the pandemic.

But it took the Massachusetts House and Senate months to come up with their own spending plans, which have yet to be finalized.

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What took so long?

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Here’s one answer – they must bill with local spending unrelated to the stated goals of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Eg:

• Riverbend Park in Cambridge is a beautiful spot, but using and enjoying it doesn’t depend on spending $25,000 on a marker celebrating the area’s longstanding designers, according to the House bill. institute.
• The Senate’s version of liberal spending goes into restoring lesser-known historic buildings in secluded places, like $75,000 for the Wilder Homestead in Buckland, $40,000 for the Jenkes Store in Douglas, and $50,000 la to build a gazebo in Townsend. Strange? Correct. Travel motives? Are not.
• Brookline Chamber of Commerce website (Discoverbrookline.com) looks good, but they still want to put $85,000 in the ARPA fund to somehow earn it.
• Youth soccer is an important community activity, but $200,000 to create a middle school field in Hanson?
• And while the folks at the Edward Kennedy Institute have done a great job teaching school children about the US Senate, they promise to pay off the debt with their own revenue. So why would the legislature want to put away that $5 million in recovery to do it for them?

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ARPA is designed to give states some comfort in how they spend their money, and it seems likely that most of the state’s money will go to legal needs. But with a series of late amendments, from questionable to ludicrous, our legislators proved once again that they had a vision problem – they saw a helping hand and thought it was. is a cookie jar.