Skewed Facts & Figures: Phantom Congressional Districts & Zip Codes = Unquantifiable Jobs
Updated January 16, 2010
According to a report in the Washington Times, the federal website Recovery.gov, the "official" tracking site for stimulus spending, came at an initial cost of more than $85 million to taxpayers, so one might expect, at the very least, accuracy. Last fall’s brouhaha about Recovery.gov’s reporting of jobs in phantom congressional districts across the country impacted North Carolina, where jobs were allegedly being created in nineteen Congressional Districts when only thirteen exist.
The administration promised to fix the errors immediately – and it has … to a point. According to the Recovery.gov website, 98.3 jobs were created in “unassigned” Congressional districts in North Carolina, at a cost of $5,722,231.
The phenomenon of stimulus jobs in made up locations was widespread. Imaginary districts in Arizona, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and other areas all reported stimulus job creation. In fact, over 75,000 of the 640,000 jobs claimed were bogus, according to media investigations.
For example, a thousand dollars of stimulus cash to buy a riding lawn mower for an Arkansas cemetery supposedly created fifty jobs.
Even Democratic leaders like House Appropriations Chair David Obey blasted the wild claims made by the Obama administration. “The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes," Obey said in his statement. “Credibility counts in government and stupid mistakes like this undermine it."
Sadly, the fictitious reporting didn't stop there. In January 2010, the Carolina Journal reported that Recovery.gov still contained errors - including the claim that $2.5 million in stimulus dollars had been spent in North Carolina zip codes that don't even exist. Ed Pound, communications director for the Recovery Accountability & Transparency Board, which is charged with oversight of Recovery.gov, took issue with the story, telling CJ that "a little rudimentary research" would have showed them exactly where the money went, had CJ bothered to perform it.
Pound told the Carolina Journal that they could easily find the information they sought in an Excel chart at Recovery.gov's Data Download Center, but CJ countered by asking Pound to perform the search himself. Pound gave up after 20 minutes, unable to locate the data - but he called back the next day after consulting with others and led CJ staff through a series of convoluted steps to uncover their data request. But he continued to defend Recovery.gov's reporting, stating that only 450 of the 131,000 zip codes listed were inaccurate.
In its defense, the Obama administration says they relied on job numbers reported by funding recipients, many of whom don’t know what congressional district (or zip code?) they’re in. Presumably, nobody assigned to stimulus oversight knows how to look up a district or zip code and allocate the erroneous projects to their proper location – either that, or the money is going into a Black Hole.
But don’t get us started.
In any event, stimulus supporters say the problem is already being rectified. This past summer, the administration contracted for a new, improved version of Recovery.gov, for which they allocated $18.5 million over the next two years. Transparency advocates won’t be pleased, however. After filing a Freedom of Information Act request and being stonewalled for two months by an administration that didn’t want to release the terms of the website deal, ProPublica finally received a heavily redacted version of the contract. Their subsequent appeals for transparency were soundly rejected.
It’s much the same here in North Carolina. The Office of Economic Recovery & Investment, an agency set up by Gov. Beverly Perdue to oversee stimulus spending and reporting in the state, has not released details of the contract and cost for their website, which is little more than an archive of press releases and plans for additional spending. The site is improving, however. October’s reporting brought some welcome project details, but requests by the Capitol Monitor for a breakdown of the 28,073 jobs allegedly “created or saved” remain unanswered.
It's almost like talking into a Black Hole.
