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"Bridge To Microsoft" Gets Federal Stimulus Funds
theodp writes "Among the first to benefit from the investment in roads and bridges from Obama's stimulus plan is Microsoft, which has $20B in the bank. Local planners have allotted $11M to help pay for a highway overpass to connect one part of Microsoft's wooded campus with another. Microsoft will contribute almost half of the $36.5M cost; other federal and local money will pay the rest. 'Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates could finance this out of pocket change,' griped Steve Ellis of the Taxpayers for Common Sense. 'Subsidizing an overpass to one of the richest companies in the country certainly isn't going to be the best use of our precious dollars.' Ellis called the project 'a bridge to Microsoft,' alluding to Alaska's infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere.'" A White House spokesman said this bridge project is still under review.
The City of Redmond thinks the project has value as well for traffic in other parts of the city. MS is picking up half the cost because they're the main beneficiary.
I'm the first one to scalp MS or jump on wasteful spending, but this doesn't seem that bad. It'll provide a lot of construction jobs, ease traffic on other roads in Redmond. I supposed you could argue there are other bridge and road projects in Washington that need the money worse. But as long as it's a public roadway and not some kind of gated private road...to me this doesn't seem to be in the same class as the Bridge to Nowhere.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Please do educate me as to how this is an essential service that benefits everyone that we would not be able to provide for ourselves.
From the article:
"The city of Redmond says the overpass will relieve congestion on other streets and support a big employer in the region, though one cutting jobs lately. Microsoft said in January that itâ(TM)s eliminating as many as 5,000 jobs, including some from its Seattle-area workforce of 41,480."
Microsoft could pay out of pocket but the new road is a public road and they shouldn't have to. The fact they're offering to pay any at all is a boon. As the article stats, MS is a huge employer in the area and creating better traffic throughput (ahem...enlarging bandwidth) is good not just for them but for the people using the road (employees of MS mostly but still "the public").
Connecting two parts of the company campus? The company should pay for it.
If I understood correctly, it connects two parts of the city. It so happens that each has one part of MS campus in it, so MS will benefit greatly, but they're not the only one to do so (and of course, as TFA says, they do pay for it, just not for all of it).
Because people all over the country pay for a lot of things for people in specific areas of the country. Washinton is a donor state receiving $0.88 for each dollar its citizens paid in Federal income tax. And given that Microsoft has its headquarters in Redmond, the city and the county are almost assuredly subsidizing at an even higher rate.
If you want to jump on why the rest of us are paying for things in specific areas of the country, you'll want to focus on New Mexico ($2), Alaska ($1.87), West Virginia ($1.83), Mississippi ($1.77), North Dakota ($1.73), Alabama ($1.71), Virginia ($1.66), Montana ($1.58) and South Dakota ($1.49).
And to answer your question from a more philosophical point of view, we all pay for roads to be built all over the country so that we have the freedom to know that we can drive wherever we want to. As a resident of California (a donor state to the tune of $0.79), I could be irked by how much New Mexico gets. But I choose to remember the vacations I've taken to New Mexico and how roads paid for with federal monies enabled me to take those vacations.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Would an overpass benefit MS? Absolutely. Would it take SEVERAL THOUSAND VEHICLES A DAY off of Redmond's roads, much to the benefit of Redmond locals and other Washington residents? Absolutely.
This whole "Why MS? They've got money!" thing stinks more of people here's biases than an actual rational review of the situation. You want perspective? The city of Redmond is 47,000 people. There are 40,000 employees of Microsoft in Redmond every day. Not accounting for the overlap between the two, that means Redmond's population is DOUBLED during the day due to Microsoft alone, let alone Nintendo, Safeco Insurance, etc, etc, etc. See why reducing traffic on the area's arterial roads is a benefit for the entire community, not just MS?
That's a lot of jobs. When you realize that some cities would fork over hundreds of millions in annual tax abatements just to get that many jobs, pitching in on a bridge is not a bad deal.
This is my sig.
The headlines are deliberately confusing what happened here. MS offered to pay 70% up front when this was being planned in 2006. The rest was covered by the city of redmond, no federal funds. Redmond city planners have applied for some federal money to cover the increased price of more recent estimates for this project. It also hasn't yet been approved afaik. If microsoft was petitioning for federal money in place of what they've offered, that would be a completely different story.