STEWARD in the News

Kevin Landrigan of the Nashua Telegraph profiled STEWARD in his column this morning. Landrigan’s piece offers some of the first insights into STEWARD’s new study, which will be released tomorrow, as well as some information about our new Executive Director, Erin Abell:

A stimulus rival draws his guns, targets cash trails

A former Barack Obama supporter turned federal-stimulus-bill opponent will ramp up his campaign with a new executive director and 24-page report on the New Hampshire impact from the Washington largesse.

In February, Fred Tausch, 37, of Nashua, bankrolled $100,000 in ads to promote his effort known as Stimulating The Economy Without Accumulating Record Debt and created a STEWARD Web site, www.stewardofprosperity.org/meet/STEWARDS, to report on where the stimulus money is going in the state.

His staff hire for the expanded effort is Erin Abell, who started on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign team the last six weeks before the first-in-the nation primary vote.

During the general election, McCain installed Abell as a full-time, $38,000-a-year regional coordinator working in the national campaign headquarters. She previously worked in finance for Morgan Stanley and KBC Financial Products, and is a 2002 Towson University graduate. On Monday, the group will release results of an economic analysis study done by Brian Gottlob, who has his own Seacoast consulting business and produces an ongoing report on economic trends.

In the report, Gottlob identified more than $920 million in stimulus money already headed to New Hampshire. That total is incomplete, he wrote, because it doesn't include what competitive grants New Hampshire projects may win in the coming months.Here's how Gottlob gets to this massive number:

• Education: $258 million.

• Medicaid: $250 million.

• Transportation: $129 million.

• Individual income support: $79 million.

• Environment: $63 million.

• Energy-weatherization: $61.7 million.

• State fiscal stabilization aid: $36 million.

• Housing: $33.5 million.

• Health care: $9.3 million.

Gottlob noted the two largest pools of money would be used to help pay for the next two-year state budget.

"Thus, states receive targeted dollars to assist them in meeting the two largest financial obligations of state government (K-12 education and Medicaid), perhaps avoid cutbacks in these programs or harmful tax hikes to maintain current levels of these expenditures,'' Gottlob wrote.

"These funds will not increase aggregate demand or stimulate job creation but they may preclude some job losses in state and local government.''

House budget writers come up with smaller numbers, with $226 million for Medicaid. The larger education number from Gottlob includes what Lynch and the House agreed to spend on state education aid, but for low-income families in Title I ($31 million) and special education ($52 million).