By Nate Beck
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As the COVID-19 outbreak throttles the U.S. economy, Congress this week is working to advance a major stimulus package that would give employers tax breaks, unemployed workers cash and pump trillions of dollars into efforts to withstand a shutdown of public life.

Even as many contractors continue to work through the crisis, relief efforts have already changed the relationship between employers and their workers. President Donald Trump has signed two bills in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak — one providing billions in cash to federal agencies and another that sets up paid family leave and other policies.

But the biggest relief package yet is still in the works.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a $2 trillion bill that would give most Americans a $1,200 check, beef up unemployment benefits and establish a fund to help businesses forced to temporarily shut down.

Construction interests have generally been supportive of the steps that Congress is taking to address the crisis. But in a statement Thursday, Steve Sandherr, CEO of the Associated General Contractors of America, warned that lawmakers have plenty of work ahead of them to offset the effects of the pandemic.

“Congress has provided the industry with a much-needed lifeline that will help firms and workers over the coming days and weeks,” Sandherr stated. “But the industry will not be able to truly recover until federal officials pass measures designed to stimulate new demand for construction, make contractors whole for losses incurred because of the coronavirus, and protect employee retirement and health plans.”

The biggest question in coming days is whether the U.S. House of Representatives will be able to overcome partisan differences to advance the $2 trillion stimulus package — the largest in American history.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill would get a vote on Friday and President Trump said he would sign it immediately. The bill contains a number of provisions intended to flood the economy with cash and forestall some of the worst effects of the freeze caused by the virus.

Here are some key provisions intended to help employers, workers, states and local governments weather the crisis:

Tax credit for keeping idle workers: The bill would allow companies to claim a tax credit if they keep idle workers on their payroll. Companies could claim up to 50 percent of what they spend on wages, up to $5,000 per worker under the provision. Businesses, however, would need to prove that revenue fell 50 percent from the same quarter a year prior to claim the credit, and wouldn’t be able to take out a loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration if they claim the tax credit.

Cash for state and local government: State and local governments could draw on the $150 billion that the CARE Act would set aside to keep them afloat during the crisis. Some states worry that skyrocketing unemployment claims could cause deep financial problems in the coming weeks, for instance.

Social Security tax deferred: Employers would be able to put off paying the 6.2 percent tax on wages for Social Security. Instead, companies would need to pay this back, putting up half by Dec. 31, 2021 and the other half by Dec. 31, 2022.

Operating loss ‘carry back’: Employers would be allowed to ‘carry back’ a net operating loss for five years, which would give struggling businesses an influx of cash.

Pass-through business deduction: The bill would pause a limitation on pass-through business losses, which would allow the owners of such companies to deduct losses they post in 2020.

‘Retail glitch’ fixed: The stimulus would also patch up the so-called ‘retail glitch’ that was part of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. A typo in that law meant retailers could only deduct 2.5 percent of the cost of a remodeling project in the year it occurred, instead of 100 percent. The mistake cost the industry hundreds of billions of dollars a year and dissuaded new construction.

Break for business borrowing: The bill would also pause a limit on interest expense deductions, which will avoid penalizing companies that borrow money during the crisis.

Families First Coronavirus Response Act

President Trump on March 18 also signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act into law. It was the second major piece of legislation to address the COVID-19 outbreak after Trump signed a bill on March 6 providing $8.3 billion in emergency funding to federal agencies to respond to the virus.

The FFCRA chiefly requires employers to provide up to 12 weeks of paid family medical leave for workers who become ill or who care for children when schools or day cares are closed. That provision takes effect on April 2 and runs through the end of the year. It requires employers to provide 80 hours of pay at an employee’s regular wages, and another 80 hours at two-thirds the employee’s rate of pay.

Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees may be exempt from the rule and an employee must have worked for a company for at least 30 days to qualify for leave.

The provision also applies only to government employers and any others with fewer than 500 workers. The FFCRA also provides tax credits for employers to offset the costs of providing paid sick leave.

AGC: More federal action needed

AGC in a letter to congressional leaders broadly praised the stimulus package the House was set to take up on Friday, but cautioned that the scale of the COVID-19 crisis means that more will need to be done to back up the construction industry.

Some construction interests also raised concerns about a provision of the stimulus package that would require employers to remain neutral in union organizing efforts. That provision, however, applies only to companies with between 500 and 10,000 employees and isn’t likely to affect many construction firms.

Sandherr stated that Congress in coming weeks should take up measures to bolster infrastructure nationally, compensate contractors for losses on federally funded projects due to delays or cancellations and take action to protect retirement and health plans of construction workers in multi-employer pension programs.

“The coronavirus relief measure the Senate passed last night will provide construction employers and employees with critically needed access to capital, expedited cash flow, worker benefit protection and critical tax relief, among other measures,” Sandherr stated. “These measures will provide construction firms and their employees with a needed lifeline to help them cope with a rapidly deteriorating business environment.”

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As more details emerge about President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act, as much as $770.6 million could be injected into Oregon’s construction industry.

The White House today released a breakdown of how the plan, if passed by Congress, would affect each state. In it, the President has earmarked more than $770 million, in addition to the several tax cuts, that would directly affect Oregon construction companies that work on transportation, education and residential projects.

According to , Oregon will receive at least $426.2 million of the $50 billion set aside for immediate investments in highway, transit, rail and aviation projects. The money could support as many as 5,500 local jobs, according to the fact sheet.

Additionally, the president would send $253.2 million to public K-12 schools in Oregon for modernizations and maintenance, as well as $71.2 million to community colleges for upgrades to learning spaces.

Oregon would also see at least $20 million of the President’s suggested $15 billion for rehabilitating and refurbishing hundreds of thousands of vacant and foreclosed homes and businesses. The funds would be available through a competitive application process.

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A touts Oregon as a model of how states should spend federal transportation stimulus money to create jobs.

Oregon ranked second in the nation for the amount of job hours created from public transportation stimulus funding, and it ranked 15th in the nation for the amount of job hours created through highway projects, according to the report.

“I think Oregon really deserves a lot of credit,” said William Schroeer, policy and research director for SGA. “I think it really is a national model.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 provided $26.6 billion to states to spend as they saw fit on surface transportation projects. Oregon received $326.3 million.

One of the main goals was to create jobs in the struggling economy, but not all states were equally successful, Schroeer said.

Smart Growth America is a national coalition of groups focused on sustainability, land conservation and neighborhood development, among other things.

Citing a 2009 study by the University of Utah’s Metropolitan Research Center, SGA noted that projects to repair roads and improve public transportation systems tend to create more jobs than projects to build new roads and bridges.

That study found that in comparison to new road construction, investments in public transportation create 31 percent more jobs per dollar and repair projects on roads and bridges create 16 percent more jobs per dollar.

Schroeer said that is because repair projects are more labor intensive and save money because they don’t require the purchase of land or materials needed in new projects. That means repair dollars can create more jobs through cost savings, Schroeer said.

While job creation was certainly a consideration for the Oregon Transportation Commission when it decided how to use the money, its main goal was actually to move forward projects rapidly, said Travis Brouwer, senior federal affairs adviser at the Oregon Department of Transportation.

“What the commission did was develop a strategy of getting projects under construction in 2009, right when we got the funds,” Brouwer said. “They looked at a whole lot of investments. The commission and the governor felt it was important to do that in order to put people back to work as quickly as possible.”

In preparation, ODOT compiled a list of ready-to-go projects, he said.

“By the end of 2010 we had spent about 80 percent of that money,” Brouwer said.

The agency also opened up the last $100 million of the money to local governments, transit districts and the Port of Portland. Those groups submitted RFPs and got several alternative transportation projects under way, Brouwer said.

The information from the SGA study is interesting to ODOT, as well, because the Obama administration is considering a $50 billion investment in surface transportation infrastructure. That move could be reflected in the president’s budget in the coming week, Brouwer said.

“There’s a very large need, long term, for paving projects,” Brouwer said. “And after this year we’ll start to see funding consistency levels fall off. So that money would help, and we certainly have plenty more projects that are ready to go.”

It’s difficult to find statistics on exactly how many jobs were created with the federal money. , there were 2,189 highway workers in the state in 2008, but the agency had no statistics on its website for 2009 or 2010.

ODOT’s general estimate is that for each $1 million spent, 14 family-wage jobs are created, spokesman Peter Murphy said.

But highway projects are performed by private contractors, so tracking exact numbers is difficult, he said.

ODOT’s goal was to spread money around to as many contractors as it could in several areas around the state, Brouwer said.

But the agency wasn’t always successful in that, at least not from what John Killin, president of Associated Builders and Contractors’ Pacific Northwest chapter, has heard from his members.

“The news from the road building sector is mixed,” Killin said. “Some companies had a good couple of years and some haven’t turned on a piece of equipment since 2008.”

Overall, though, Killin said he thought the SGA report was accurate.

“Based on the logic of it, the study makes sense,” Killin said. “And we certainly believe that direct stimulus and getting people back to work was and is extremely important.”

Melinda Dailey, executive director of National Utility Contractors Association of Oregon and Southwest Washington, agreed with the findings and said that 2009 was a solid year for paving companies that are members of her group, and that 2010 appeared to be good as well.

“For the most part, the goal of the stimulus was to get money out as quickly as possible, and that certainly was helpful for our members,” Dailey said. “The 2009 work was almost all paving.

“Construction has been hit by the economy problems harder than most sectors. Utility jobs are a lot of what we do, and we see more bidders overall on every job. So while there was more paving work, I’m hoping more of the underground utility jobs will start to pick up as well.”

In the SGA report, the group used the Utah study as an underpinning to analyze data published by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for all 50 states.

It then ranked them according to the number of jobs created.

“Oregon spent 91 percent of (its) money on roads and road repair efforts,” Schroeer said. “I think Oregon got just as many jobs out of that as it was going to get.”

The state spent 24 percent of its stimulus money overall on public transportation projects, second only to the District of Columbia, which spent 30.2 percent of its money on those projects.

“The state spent its money well, and it positioned itself for a better future,” Schroeer said. “When gas gets back to $4 a gallon after the recession ends, Oregonians will have more choices in terms of transportation than many other states.”

In contrast, some states that got the least bang for their federal buck spent little on public transportation.

“States like Arkansas, which has really poor roads overall, spent more money building new roads than they did on fixing the old ones,” Schroeer said. “If they can’t keep up with the old ones, it makes you wonder how much maintenance they’ll be able to do on those new ones.”

Arkansas used 19 percent of its money on road repairs and 81 percent on new projects; it was tied with Kansas for worst use of highway funds, he added.

Arkansas also spent the least on public transportation projects – 0 percent, according to the study.

“We really did see a wide variety in spending choices among the states,” Schroeer said. “When the issue comes back up in Congress, we can use these findings to better direct where funding goes in the future.”

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Bye-bye stimulus dollars.

The money that had been flowing in from the federal government for public works and transportation projects across the country has slimmed to a trickle, which in turn is starting to cause a spike in unemployment in the embattled construction industry, said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for Associated General Contractors of America.

“What we’re seeing on a national basis is contractors telling us that stimulus work is winding down,” Turmail said. “There are some larger projects still out there, bridge work and highway work that will continue, but most of the other work has finished.”

Nationally construction employment shed 16,000 jobs in December and the industry-wide unemployment rate grew to 20.7 percent. Across the United States, 5.6 million people work in the industry, a 27 percent decline since the peak in August 2006 of 7.7 million people, according to .

Local figures for employment won’t be available for the month of December for a few more weeks, Turmail said.

Private sector construction remains sluggish at best, but until recently the stimulus had been helping to keep at least some workflow going.

“We do think the bulk of the stimulus has now passed the market by,” Turmail said.

To help, AGC officials hope the federal government will pass some stalled bills to renew funding to projects for surface transportation, airport terminals and runways and waterways. Those areas have only received temporary funding for small projects since 2009, Turmail said.

“Agencies like the Oregon Department of Transportation don’t know what their funding will look like a year or two or three years from now,” Turmail said. “The harder it is to plan, the more states will do short-term small projects that are easier to do. And things, like your Columbia River Crossing project, generally have to wait.”

AGC plans to lobby Congress about the issue, but it could be an uphill battle, Turmail admitted.

“Certainly you’ve got an incoming congress that seems unlikely to take up a large spending bill right away,” Turmail said. “But you have to realize that good transportation and infrastructure does help economics in a wide variety of areas.”

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Wind turbine maker Vestas Americas is passing on the opportunity to use a $31 million tax-exempt, federally-subsidized bond for its new facility in Portland’s Pearl District.

Vestas’ decision to pass on the Recovery Zone Bond gives Oregon’s largest for-profit employer, Intel, the chance to use it for one of biggest construction projects the state has seen in a long time.  Intel will use the money, along with nearly $69 million of the state’s additional bond authority, for its new fabrication plant at the Ronler Acres Campus in Hillsboro.

The state’s business development department, Business Oregon, was given $258.7 million in bond authority via the Recovery Zone Bond program created as part of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last year. Of the allotment, $155.2 million was to be bonded to private projects, like the Intel project, while the remaining $103.5 million went to public projects around the state.

The only stipulation with the program was that the bond had to be ready to sell by Dec. 31 of this year. The state of Oregon also put in a place a deadline of this past Friday for projects looking to get money from the program.

“These bonds have definitely helped,” said Lynn Schoessler, deputy director of Business Oregon and executive director of the Infrastructure Financing Authority of Oregon. “But the projects they have helped had to fall into the timeline the bonds had to be used in.

“A lot of projects missed the opportunity because it just wasn’t feasible to get them started quick enough to make the bonds cost effective.”

For private projects, the bonds get a tax-exempt rate, a rate that’s usually reserved for public projects. That benefit is offset by the fact that interest payments start as soon as the bonds are sold. So the owner of any project not ready to start construction immediately after the bond sale would end up paying more for the project in the long run, Schoessler said.

The city of Portland put in an initial request for $31 million in Recovery Zone bonds in order to entice Vestas to keep its headquarters in Portland. The wind turbine manufacturer did decide to stay in Portland, a plan that included retrofitting a former Meier & Frank warehouse using the bond as well as an $8.1 million interest-free loan from the Portland Development Commission.

Last week, however, the developer of the Vestas’ project told the city and state it would pass on the Recovery Zone bonds. Gerding Edlen Development had managed instead to secure $29 million in private financing in addition to the PDC loan.

“The numbers just worked out better, in this case, to go the route of private financing,” said Patrick Wilde, a senior project manager with Gerding Edlen. “It doesn’t always work out like that, and if we had a different project we would definitely look into recovery bonds again.

“But for this project it just made more sense financially.”

Gerding Edlen and Vestas remain tightlipped about the source of the private share of the project money. Officials from both the PDC and Business Oregon said they did not know who provided the private funds.

While it doesn’t affect the PDC financially, administrators there say they won’t have time to find another local private project that could use the bonds.

“We haven’t really been looking at other opportunities for the bond because we thought it was spoken for with this Vestas deal,” said Shawn Uhlman, spokesperson for the PDC. “But now that they’ve decided to pass, the money will go back to the state.”

But one company’s loss could be another’s gain.

Before announcing its plans to build a new 1.8 million-square-foot fabrication plant last month, Intel had put in a request with the state to use $100 million in Recovery Zone bonds, Schoessler said. Intel will be spending at least $6 billion updating four of its fabrication plants – two of which are in Hillsboro – and building a completely new fabrication plant at its Hillsboro campus. The possibility of Recovery Zone bonds was one of many state and local incentives used to entice the company to go forward with the project.

At the time that Intel made its initial request for the bonds, it didn’t appear the money would be available, according to Schoessler. But with Vestas backing out on its bond, there’s a good chance Intel will get all of its requested bonds and the state will use all of its allotment by the deadline, Schoessler said.

“We were lucky that Intel was waiting in the wings or there could have been a chance that the extra money wasn’t used,” Schoessler said. “I think this worked out well because the financing not only helped Intel make the decision to invest in Oregon, the timeline is going to entice them to get the project going soon.

“And right now we need that.”

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The Oregon Department of Transportation has been awarded $700,000 through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to install electric vehicle fast-charging stations between Eugene and Ashland.

In total, ODOT and the private firm it chooses to work with will install eight stations along Interstate 5.

Typically, charging stations take between 20 and 30 minutes to charge 80 percent of a vehicle. While the exact locations for the stations are not official, they will be located directly off Interstate 5 interchanges and next to stores and rest areas, according to a statement from Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

The project is also part of a February agreement between Kulongoski, the Premier of the Province of British Columbia and the governors of Washington and California to create a green highway down Interstate 5. The goal of the pact is to install enough charging stations that a person could drive an electric car from British Columbia to Baja California. This grant is the last funding needed to close the gap between the Canadian and California boarders.

ODOT plans to have the sites selected by the end of the year, the private contractor selected by early 2011 and the charging stations installed by fall 2011.

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Waves roll into the Oregon Coast on a daily basis, but over time they have begun to break down jetties built to help protect inland channels.

According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, work costing approximately $1.2 billion is needed to repair jetties on the Oregon Coast. Sen. Ron Wyden is calling for the release of money from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, which has more than $5 billion available, to pay for jetty repairs along the coast.

The fund, according to Tom Towslee, state communications director for Wyden’s office, was set up by Congress to pay for dredging and maintenance of harbor channels and jetties.

“It’s not being used. There’s $5 billion sitting there,” Towslee said.

The corps’ calculations are based on what it would cost to build up each of the 11 jetties on the Oregon Coast to their original length. Matt Rabe, spokesman for the corps, said the process to repair the jetties, which were originally constructed by the corps from 1880 to 1970, would take years. He also said the cost could increase over time.

A fully intact jetty funnels water out to sea in a contained area, naturally dredging the channel and keeping it at a depth that allows boats to travel and in out of harbors. A jetty also provides a definable, reliable and stable entrance into a bay.

“Without these jetties there would be no coastal economy,” Towslee said. “These ports mean tourist money, commercial fishing money. No one could get in or out of these ports without jetties, and these towns on the coast rely on these port towns for income.”

A project to restore the north jetty at Tillamook Bay has been under way since fall 2009; construction is set to wrap up in September. The jetty was 5,700 feet long when it was built in 1917; storm damage has since reduced its length by nearly 300 feet. When the project is completed, the jetty will be 100 feet longer.

More than 1,000 30- to 50-ton boulders are being added, and a “bull nose,” or broader tip, is being installed at the end of the jetty to better handle waves resulting from storms. A crane is being used to lift boulders from the bottom of the ocean floor. The boulders, which are considered relic stones, were part of the original jetty construction.

The Tillamook project was paid for with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Rabe said Tillamook’s south jetty and two Coos Bay jetties also need repairs due to decades of storm damage.

The major project most likely to draw the corps’ attention next, Rabe said, involves repairs to the three jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River. Rabe estimated that the work would cost $500 million and require 20 years.

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Cities and counties across Oregon are rushing to use federal bonds before a Dec. 31 deadline.

A significant amount of the bond money, which was intended to stimulate the building industry, has not been used. Local government officials admit that the federal process has been daunting, and that finding the right projects has been tiresome. But they’re working to allocate the money before it disappears.

The bonds, known as recovery bonds, were issued through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to all 50 states. The states distributed money to each county and each city with a population greater than 100,000.

Oregon was authorized to issue $258.7 million in recovery bonds – $155.2 million for facilities and $103.5 million for economic development. Approximately $185 million of the bonds either has been issued already or will be, said Marc Zolton, a spokesman for the Oregon Business and Development Department, which is in charge of issuing the bonds.

The facility bonds are issued through the city or county for private projects. But unlike a typical private bond, the purchaser doesn’t have to pay taxes on the interest earned. Private projects thus receive tax benefits of a public bond.

“These bonds are a great stimulus because they give bond buyers a reason to lend to private projects in this economy,” said Patrick Quinton, urban development, business and industry division manager for the Portland Development Commission, which is in charge of allocating Portland’s bonds. “But even though they can be a big help, they’ve been slow to get off the ground.”

The first speed bump was the time-consuming process to secure the bonds and complete the accompanying paperwork and procedures, Zolton said. Then the department had to market the program to the various cities and counties, he said.

But since the facility bonds were handed over to the cities and counties, the problem has been finding the right projects under the right timelines, Quinton said. The project has to be ready to go and have any additional funding in place before the bond is put on the market, he said.

“In addition to the timeline, the project has to be creditworthy with a credit score of at least an AA- because the city and the state’s name will be attached to it,” Quinton added. “And in this economy, even some of the best positioned developers don’t have that.”

The city of Portland was given $20 million in facility bonds but hasn’t issued any of it. There are four or five projects the PDC has targeted, but nothing has come to fruition yet, Quinton said.

However, the city recently made a move.

Not wanting to use its allotted $20 million, the city of Portland earlier this month asked the state to issue it an additional $30 million in facility bonds to entice Vestas Americas to keep its headquarters in Portland. The request is expected to be approved at the PDC board meeting on Friday. Vestas, the world’s leading producer of solar power systems, would get the $30 million tax-exempt bond for a $60 million renovation of the former Meier & Frank warehouse in the Pearl District.

“We’d heard that some parts of the state weren’t planning on using the money, so we asked the state and (it was) willing to help us keep Vestas around,” Quinton said.

In Eugene, city officials are working to authorize an $8 million recovery bond for Bennett Management Co. to construct a new downtown office building. But the city’s remaining $3 million in bond authority likely won’t be used, said Denny Braud, development analyst for the city of Eugene.

“These are not easy bonds to issue because of all the people you need on board and the timeline that must be stuck to,” Braud said. “We just stumbled into this one project, and will be very fortunate if it works out.”

The economic development recovery bonds, on the other hand, can be used only by public entities, which get a 45 percent interest subsidy on the bond. Also, these bonds may be sold on the private bond market, where they could generate more interest.

Multnomah County has issued has plans to issue its $5 million economic development recovery bond to help pay for its $20 million East County Courthouse project. Because of the subsidy, the county will save $300,000 to $400,000 in interest over the life of the bond, said Mark Campbell, acting director of finance and risk management with Multnomah County.

“We were thinking about a lot of projects, but this one rose to the top because we knew we wanted to get it going by the end of the year,” Campbell said. “It fit the timeline.”

Portland used an $11 million economic recovery bond earlier this year to finance energy and water conservation projects at 100 Portland public schools.

Washington County has a list of projects for its bonds, as well. It has issued $19.3 million in facility bonds and $12.8 million in economic development bonds. Hillsboro and Banks have been the main beneficiaries so far. Beaverton felt the effects of the short timeline; it wasn’t able to get a list of potential projects together for the bonds by the time Washington County commissioners needed it.

And even Umatilla County recently authorized a $9 million grant for improvements to a Snack Alliance manufacturing facility in Hermiston. The company also is in an enterprise zone, so it gets property tax abatement on top of the bond financing for the improvements.

“They’ve been slow to get issued,” Zolst said. “But we’re going to do everything in our power to get the money out the door before it’s gone.”

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Government agencies throughout Oregon have managed to keep contractors busy for the past few years with a steady stream of money for a variety of transportation-related projects, first in the form of contracts to fix bridges, and then in the shape of the federal stimulus programs to pave and fix roads.

But with money from both of those programs running out, government agencies across Oregon are starting to wonder where they will find money to pay for future road and transportation projects in the state.

One possible source is the second phase of the federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER, grant program, which will pay for surface area transportation projects. Approximately $600 million is available; however, the 24 different agencies in Oregon that registered early for the program will have to compete not only with each other, but also with more than 2,300 other agencies across the nation that filed pre-applications.

The application process for TIGER money is extremely competitive, said Travis Brouwer, federal affairs advisor for the Oregon Department of Transportation. But this time around, it may be fiercer than usual. Many states are scrambling to figure out how to maintain jobs originally created with fast-disappearing federal stimulus money.

Oregon is one of the states where contractors are watching nervously as they finish current projects. Seven of 12 paving contracts being handled right now by Wildish Construction Co. of Eugene, for example, are being paid for at least in part with money from the stimulus package, said Randy Hledik, general services director for Wildish.

In 2009, Oregon received a total of $494.8 million of stimulus money through a highway program and the first round of TIGER funding, both via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Of that money, Oregon used $345 million to pay for work on ODOT transportation projects. Transit programs received $114.6 million of the money to invest in projects.

“We estimate, that in Oregon, 14 jobs are sustained, not necessarily created, for every million dollars we spend,” said Dave Thompson, spokesman for ODOT, who said the calculation is based on a formula created by economists.

Using this formula, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sustained, and in some cases created, slightly more than 4,800 jobs in Oregon through ODOT construction projects. In comparison, the OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program, which Oregon created to help fix cracked and deteriorating bridges in the state, is credited with sustaining an average of 5,000 jobs annually through the 10-year program, which started in 1993.

TriMet also tapped into the ODOT equation.

“We used the ODOT formula to calculate jobs for our $53.3 million (share of) ARRA funds received,” said Mary Fetsch, TriMet spokeswoman. “We calculated for the $53.3 million in federal stimulus funds, it supported about 740 direct jobs and 1,100 indirect jobs.”

TriMet is one of the Oregon groups seeking TIGER money to fund new transit programs in the Portland area, but the agency hasn’t decided which projects it will submit for consideration.

The future for transportation jobs in Oregon is not completely gloom and doom, however, Brouwer said. In 2009, the Oregon Legislature approved raising motor vehicle-related fees to raise $300 million per year to be used for transportation projects. Brouwer was quick to point out that these projects won’t be ready to move ahead before stimulus and OTIA III jobs wrap up.

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It took a Great Depression-era program to build the McLoughlin Promenade wall that frames Oregon City’s signature sights. Fixing that badly deteriorated wall took a Great Recession program.

Oregon City got approximately $1 million to repair the promenade wall through the federal stimulus package passed last year, said Laura Butler, Oregon City’s project manager for the renovation.

The promenade wall, a Works Progress Administration project, was completed in 1938. “The money came from President Roosevelt to bring employment back,” Butler said. “And that’s happening again with the stimulus.”

The maintenance project started last August. General contractor Pioneer Waterproofing Co. is set to finish later this month – four months ahead of schedule. With a high bluff as a work site, workers had to take special precautions to stay safe, said Mike Crawford, Pioneer’s president.

They used special brackets to support them as they worked on the bluff’s edge. “They were 70 or 80 feet above the road or above the railroad tracks,” Crawford said.

“We had to custom-build (the brackets) to provide a working area on the outside of the wall that kept workers safe and kept construction debris and tools within the area,” he said. “And we had to make sure nothing could drop on them.”

The work involved cutting out mortar joints and replacing them – called tuckpointing – and replacing the Grand Staircase and mortar caps and railings along the wall. Subcontractor Michael’s Precast made 190 new concrete rails to match the originals, which had badly deteriorated.

Subcontractors Concrete Alternatives and Dale Britton Excavating also worked on the project.

Although Butler said she didn’t know of any pieces of the wall tumbling off and hitting the highway below, the rock wall and concrete railings were in bad shape. “They were covered by an immense amount of moss, and a lot of the wall was deteriorated and crumbling,” she said. “It wasn’t in safe condition.”

The railings were the greatest safety hazard, Butler said. “In a lot of places, the concrete around the rebar had been eaten away and deteriorated, and the rebar had been bent into a V shape,” she said.

While the wall dates from the New Deal, much of the work in the area predates that era. The concrete Grand Staircase replaced an earlier wooden version.

The unusual slope of the steps reflects that earlier era, Butler said. “They have a strange rise and run – a very short rise and long run,” she said. “That’s because they were originally constructed to allow horses to go up them.”

A wooden elevator was built in 1913 and replaced with the existing municipal elevator in 1955, Butler said. Horses still had to take the stairs.

Pioneer kept the original stones in the wall as it replaced the mortar. That replacement took some historical sleuthing.

“The contractor went in and did an analysis of the existing grout mortar, and determined how much rock and sand were in it,” said Wendy Schmidt, a consultant with Wallis Engineering. “Then they matched that with the new mortar they were putting in.”

Older mixes included more whole river rocks and less crushed, mined rock. “They used bigger, rounder rocks,” Schmidt said. “Today you see more fractured rock.”

Once the project started, workers realized the wall needed more work than expected, Crawford said. “As we were cleaning the walls, some deterioration that wasn’t as noticeable before became more noticeable.”

Oregon City officials secured some urban renewal money so they wouldn’t need to return for bigger repairs later, he said. “The city felt it was in their interest to get it done now.”

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