I certainly do, and the key is to make that predictable and longer term.
There are two things I have observed. First is that usually cities have to constantly guess about what the next funding will be, which makes it very difficult to think long term, which cities try to do. Second is that there is already a federal directive being given with regard to the types of priorities, in keeping with the comment made by a previous questioner.
Regarding shovel-ready projects, in my experience, having responded to federal calls for shovel-ready projects, as soon as you say “shovel ready”, by definition that is telling municipalities what types of projects—and in some cases, what specific projects—they can and should put forward. To the suggestion that the federal government saying that smart projects should proceed is limiting local municipalities' flexibility, I would suggest that the federal government has already been limiting municipalities' flexibility, an example being by insisting that projects be shovel ready.