The time when New Hampshire fixed half a bridge
Topline: The infamous Gravina Island Bridge in Alaska became a symbol of government waste by earning the nickname “Bridge to Nowhere.” In 2010, New Hampshire decided it wanted in on the fun, and used $150,000 from a federal stimulus package to repave a bridge that had not been in use since 1860.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the money spent on New Hampshire’s Sawyer Bridge — which would be worth $216,000 today.
Key facts: Though Sawyer Bridge was not in use and did not cross a body of water, officials got funding to renovate it by saying they would turn it into a public park.
Pedestrians and cyclists can go onto the bridge, but they can’t fully cross it. The bridge ends abruptly with an 8-foot drop onto a grassy field which, as of 2010, housed a Ford dealership.
The project created a whopping two jobs.
One resident told WMUR9 ABC, “I think that money could have been used to fix roads that people actually drive on instead of using our tax dollars to fix something no one actually uses.”
Critical quote: While running for president in 2012, Mitt Romney gave a speech in front of the bridge to symbolize what he said was fiscal ineptitude by the federal government. The bridge construction was funded by Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill passed in 2009.
“[Obama’s stimulus package] is without question the largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in American history, and the bad news is it was not just wasteful spending,” Romney said. “It is wasteful borrowing as well because we still are going to be paying on that debt for years and years and years.”
Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.
Summary: Maybe one day another stimulus package will come around to turn Sawyer Bridge into something that can actually be crossed.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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