White House aide praises Rescue cash for Oakland County home upgrade, Detroit's greenway

A White House adviser stood with an Oak Park homeowner on her front lawn to praise how the retired autoworker got her leaky, drafty windows replaced.

Then he turned the microphone over to Gwen Bynum, who,, on Monday told a crowd of Oakland County officials, “I love my windows and I don’t have to pay this money back — that’s the best part.”

Bynum, 82, said she never could’ve afforded the $3,000 cost to install her energy-efficient windows, which cleared up the foggy view she'd had with her old windows, on a street of 1950s-era ranch houses. Oakland County offered the improvement free. The county-administered cash came from Washington, D.C., in a small chunk of the massive $1.9 trillion being spent around the nation through the American Rescue Plan Act.

ARPA, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021, aimed to give local governments a mountain of federal dollars to spend, to revive an economy socked by COVID-19. The deadly virus killed more than 1 million Americans, including Bynum’s husband. Turning to the smiling widow, White House senior adviser Tom Perez told Bynum and the crowd, “Your husband is standing right next to you now, proud of you for being here today.” Bynum, a GM retiree, teared up as her granddaughter led the crowd in applause.

Perez, who was U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Barack Obama, said he was grateful to see ARPA helping seniors stay safe and comfortable in their homes, at the same time saving energy for the planet and energy dollars for seniors’ budgets. He finished his remarks just as skies over metro Detroit began a downpour and reporters scurried for cover. Earlier, Oakland County officials had said Bynum’s windows, and similar improvements at 1,100 other houses in Oakland County, were just a small example of how they were spending their $244 million in ARPA dollars.

Referring to the homeowners' energy improvements, Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward, D-Royal Oak, said: “We expect these households will save an average of $3,351 a year in energy costs."

Woodward said other examples of how Oakland County is spending its ARPA funding include:

• Expanding the county's mental health services.
• Helping high school grads get college degrees or certified training.
• Providing incentives for developers to build affordable housing.
• Providing 3D printers and training to small manufacturers when their suppliers, during the pandemic, stopping shipping raw materials.
• Giving free technical and financial advice to small businesses trying to survive the pandemic.
• Expanding and improving parks and senior centers.

So, did ARPA help or hurt the nation overall? Economists generally agree that, when the pandemic spread, the U.S. needed a quick infusion of government spending to avoid having rampant business shutdowns become a major recession. Most economists also agree that the Biden administration's giant $1.9 trillion cost for ARPA triggered serious inflation, even as it pumped life into an economy that in many areas was grinding to a halt.

The result was a rebounding American economy and strong labor market. With inflation now easing, the U.S. economy "has outpaced its counterparts in Europe and elsewhere," according to a report of the BBC, published in March, the third anniversary of Biden signing the ARPA legislation.

White House official:Joe Louis Greenway is about 'reconnecting communities'

A study of how ARPA dollars were spent by local governments such as in Oakland County and Detroit — conducted by the Brookings Institution, a major think tank in Washington — found last year that "after an early focus on providing direct relief and addressing the health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, local governments are now finding a balance between cautious fiscal oversight and experimentation with innovative investments." The same study showed that local officials nationwide were using the funds almost entirely for one-time investments, to avoid setting up programs that would need future outlays for staff and operations.

The lengthy Brookings study said that the city of Detroit was using some of its new federal funding "to help applicants overcome barriers to completing applications, and set up required organizational accounting, to compete for city procurement contracts."

After the talk of new windows in Oak Park, Perez headed south to Detroit, where he voiced more praise for how ARPA funds are helping metro Detroit. This time, it was at a demolition site of the Joe Louis Greenway, a 30-mile stretch of industrial wasteland, turning into parks and pathways that will link Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park and Dearborn.

Speaking to a crowd of dignitaries and Greenway supporters, and citing ARPA's $90 million Greenway investment, Perez said: "You're transforming communities for literally decades to come."

Contact Bill Laytner: blaitner@freepress.com

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of deaths in the U.S. caused by COVID-19. The latest CDC data shows the virus has been the cause of death of 1.2 million since Jan. 1, 2020. This story has been corrected.