Government Spending, Edging Up, Is a Stimulus
NAPLES, Fla. — For a long stretch, government spending cutbacks at all levels were a substantial drag on economic growth. Now, finally, relief is in sight.
For the first time since 2011, local, state and federal governments are providing a small but significant increase to prosperity.
“There’s not a lot of positive contribution coming from the government sector, but when you’re talking about economic growth, less of a negative is a positive,” said Chris Varvares, senior managing director and co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers.
And so on a recent windswept afternoon, John Lynch, armed with a police radio and a giant net, stood along a fishing pier in Naples, on guard for pelicans that might become entangled in fishing lines.
“That’s my job, to try and get them to safety,” said Mr. Lynch, a retired banker with a snowy beard whose uniform was a fisherman’s cap and shorts.
Mr. Lynch is one of the latest additions to the city’s payroll. His is the kind of government job this Gulf Coast town never would have even contemplated during the recession.
“When everybody else is cutting back, you don’t hire people,” said Ann Marie S. Ricardi, the finance director for the city of Naples, about 130 miles south of Tampa.
Across the nation, state and local governments, Democratic and Republican alike, are spending on projects that were stalled. Teachers, who were laid off in droves in recent years, are being hired again. Even federal spending in some sectors is on the rise.
But no one is making plans for spending sprees, said Donald J. Boyd, senior fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. Many officials were spooked by the most serious economic downturn since the 1930s, he said, and these are still tough times for many states and localities.
“It’s just in comparison to what they were, they’re great,” Mr. Boyd said.
Since the stimulus programs approved in 2008 and 2009, Republicans in Washington have pushed to cut federal spending; even the $1.1 trillion budget bill that Congress recently passed to keep the government operating through September abides by spending caps and includes further trims.