Who’s minding the store?
In its bid for transparency, the federal government has overshot the mark into the realm of ghostlike data and vanishing results.
The website, recovery.gov is a gold mine of information concerning the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
And misinformation.
You can lose yourself for hours drilling into all the information available.
And sometimes the information can be confusing.
And perplexing.
And questionable.
For example, as of Oct. 30 through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Connecticut has received $1,686,417,828 with 7,533.79 jobs created/saved.
But on the page that shows the nation in map form, Connecticut was awarded $1,696,730,000 and has so far received $317,060,000. The number of jobs created/saved is 7,551.
OK, probably just an oversight, but if we are to track the money, shouldn”™t the federal government”™s numbers gibe? As the saying goes, a million dollars here, a million dollars there, and pretty soon you”™re talking serious money.
Â
Let”™s take a look at the numbers for Connecticut”™s 42nd Congressional District. Twenty-five jobs were created with no stimulus money.
Â
How can that be?
Better yet, how can that be in a state that has two U.S. senators and five members of the House of Representatives?
And it gets worse: seven other nonexistent congressional districts are included from the 00 district to the 64th.
The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity points out that $6.4 billion was allocated to 440 districts that do not exist. But maybe they do in our 52nd and 54th states.
So where exactly is that money? Hard to say.
Better pull out that asterisk.
According to the recovery.org website, Connecticut falls in the middle of all states when it comes to jobs created/saved ”“ 7,551 ”“ at No. 26. To offer some perspective, the No.1 state is California with 110,185 jobs created/saved. New York follows with 40,620.
The government got into some trouble when it started ballyhooing the number of jobs created. It seems all were not true job creations, thus the introduction of the slash mark to allay critics.
In recent weeks, the administration subtracted thousands of so-called created jobs.
Â
Mine deeper into the fed”™s numbers and we see Fairfield County has received $244,370,534 in funds. Eleven contracts have been awarded totaling $26,492,407. Out of that money, 8.10 jobs have been created.
Â
The remaining $217,878,227 is in the form of grants, 223 to be exact. The number of jobs created is 254.49.
Sometimes the money awarded creates/saves no jobs. The town of Greenwich was awarded $251,004 for sidewalk reconstruction project at Hamilton Avenue in Byram. Zero jobs are being created. The project has not yet started.
The Greenwich money with no job creation/retention points to a bigger problem with the federal stimulus money.
Discrepancies in congressional districts notwithstanding, the bigger question is how much bang for the buck is the federal government getting for doling out billions?
Looking at Fairfield County, its $244,370,534 has created/saved 263 jobs. That created/saved category is a hazy way of accounting. Are those 263 jobs worth $244 million? Were there even 263 jobs saved?
Last week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin, said:
“We designed the Recovery Act to be open and transparent and I expect the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, who oversees the recovery act website and data to have information that is accurate, reliable and understandable to the American public. Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now.”
Good luck with that request.