Crews competent to lay road asphalt have a total of $1.5 million speeding their way in Amador County.

And contractors qualified to install road signs stand in the route of $100,000 aimed at local cities.

Lucrative paving contracts for two stretches of State Route 88 in the Silver Lake area - one near Barton and another near Plasse's - will be generated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In addition, the recovery program means cities can contract to upgrade the reflecting capacity of some 767 road signs posted within town boundaries of Jackson, Sutter Creek, Ione, Plymouth and Amador City.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took credit Monday for a speedy pushing into the California economy of more than $1 billion that will fund some 80 project contracts around the state. The Recovery Act gave states a four-month window within which to obligate roughly half of their transportation-infrastructure funding. The Schwarzenegger administration needed less than two months. California is the first state in the nation to obligate as much as $1 billion of this funding, according to Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Camille Anderson.

"Californians can rest assured that we are working around the clock, meeting federal deadlines and creating jobs in California through the Recovery Act," Schwarzenegger announced.

County supervisors Tuesday voted to allocate $100,000 in federal recovery money to be spent on road signs posted within urban boundaries.

"This upgrade of reflectorized signs is mandated, so now we can expand that work into the cities," said District 1 Supervisor John Plasse.

The county is on pace to meet a state-imposed deadline to convert to highly reflective signs giving curve warnings, speed limits and the like, said Barbara Belvoir, senior public-works project engineer.

For highway paving and other transportation-infrastructure work, each $1 billion in recovery money is projected to generate a total of 18,000 jobs lasting for varying amounts of time depending on completion periods for various projects, said Chantel Miller, spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation. On that formula, at the Barton and Plasse's worksites combined, it is projected that more than 2,000 jobs would open up, each beginning in July and lasting about a month, according to Miller.

Near Barton, a funded project calls for rubberized asphalt overlay to be put down from .1 miles west of Wagon Wheel Drive to .1 miles west of Silver Lake, according to Caltrans. Its estimated cost is $1.1 million. Near Plasse's, a chip seal will be done from two miles west of Tragedy Springs Road to .3 miles east of Kit Carson Lodge at an estimated cost of $407,000.

Overall, California will receive a total of more than $2.5 billion from the Recovery Act for highway and street contracts. The state will receive another $1 billion for transit projects.