I continue to believe Hennepin County Commission Jeff Johnson is a smart guy. He just plays a fool in his Hennepin County Taxpayer Watchdog blog.
Watchdogs, of course, bark at everything that moves. The mailman, the little kid across the street, an ice cream truck, another dog. Everything except their master.
If you live in a remote area beset by cross-country drug runners (or are Rep. Steve Drazcowski), you may want to have a watchdog in the yard. But in the Metro area, you're mostly going to annoy your neighbors.
Commissioner Johnson looks at a county report on federal stimulus funds and concludes the $718 million in Recovery Act dollars have so far translated "to a little over $276,000 per job created or retained."
Johnson claims the spending is a failure because the funded infrastructure projects are supposed to be judged by the number of jobs directly created.
Apparently, all the bricks and mortar and public assets being built don't count. According to watchdog math, all that money went just to create jobs.
The county budget people must love it when Johnson starts woofing at their work. But try talking sense to a watchdog.
