So...I am reading the St. Louis Business Journal (I live in St. Louis, MO) and the headline from last week was "City, county request $4.3 billion" (from the fothcoming Obama stimulus package). It was a long article, detailing a grab bag of projects throughout the St. Louis metro area that lawmakers hope will be "jump-started" with this money that is supposedly coming from the federal govt. Among the requests: $900 million to expand the MetroLink light-rail system, $219.5 million for streetscape improvements throughout downtown, $160 million for school building improvements, $100 million for the regional emergency communications system, and so on, and so on. This is only a list of requests, the metro area knows it won't get everything it wants.

This upcoming $700 billion (?) infrastructure stimulus is certainly debatable from a public policy point of view. As a fiscal conservative, I have serious doubts about it, to be honest. Nevertheless, quite a bit of "infrastructure" spending is coming whether we support it or not. My question to those of you that live in OKC: What is the word on Mayor Cornett's and Governor Henry's "wish list?" Is there, somewhere, a list of what projects in the OKC area might be "jump started" by a fiscal stimulus bill? Mass transit, wi-fi, highway improvements, parks, schools, etc? If money is going to flow, I would hope that my hometown office holders were smart enough to at least line up in the right place, but I haven't been able to find anything about it.