Pandemic relief money spent on hotel, ballpark, ski slopes, other projects

Thanks to a sudden $140 million cash infusion, officials in Broward County, Florida, recently broke ground on a high-end hotel that will have views of the Atlantic Ocean and an 11,000-square-foot spa.

In New York, Dutchess County pledged $12 million for renovations of a minor league baseball stadium to meet requirements the New York Yankees set for their farm teams.

And in Massachusetts, lawmakers delivered $5 million to pay off debts of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate in Boston, a nonprofit established to honor the late senator that has struggled financially.

The three distinctly different outlays have one thing in common: Each is among the scores of projects that state and local governments across the United States are funding with federal coronavirus relief money despite having little to do with combating the pandemic, a review by The Associated Press has found.

The expenditures amount to a fraction of the $350 billion made available through last year’s American Rescue Plan to help state and local governments weather the crisis. But they are examples of uses of the aid that are inconsistent with the rationale that Democrats offered for the record $1.9 trillion bill: The cash was desperately needed to save jobs, help those in distress, open schools and increase vaccinations.

Republicans are already balking at additional money for pandemic relief that President Joe Biden has requested, and programs that seem far removed from ones that directly combat the virus will probably add to the resistance in the GOP.

“They need to give us an accounting,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who tried unsuccessfully to amend the Democrats’ bill last year to add more limits on how the money could be spent. “Show us how you’ve already spent the money Congress gave you,” he said, adding, “It’s hard to imagine how a four-star hotel is helping to solve the pain of COVID.”

Many of the projects identified by the AP echo porkbarrel spending disasters such as Alaska’s $398 million “Bridge to Nowhere,” which was canceled in 2007 after a public uproar.

But with permissive Treasury Department rules governing how the pandemic money can be spent, state and local governments face few limitations. New Jersey allocated $15 million for upgrades to sweeten the state’s bid to host the 2026 World Cup. In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, officials allocated $53,000 for a remodeling of City Hall.

Included among the projects and expenditures identified by the AP:

• $400 million to build new prisons in Alabama, accounting for nearly onequarter of the total aid the state will receive through the program.

• Tens of millions of dollars for tourism marketing campaigns in Puerto Rico ($70 million), Washington, D.C. ($8 million) and Tucson, Arizona ($2 million). The city of Alexandria, Virginia, also announced it would spend $120,000 to give its tourism website a makeover.

• $6.6 million to replace irrigation systems at two golf courses in Colorado Springs.