Tracking stimulus spending

By W.J. Hennigan

Forget rifling through government documents or phoning politicians to uncover where stimulus dollars are headed. With searchable spending databases, it’s just a point and click away.

It starts with President Barack Obama’s pledge for a more transparent and accountable administration. On Feb. 17, the White House launched the Web site, Recovery.gov – a one-stop shop that tracks the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, explains how, when, and where the money is being spent.

Federal transparency
Information on the funding will begin to be disclosed on March 3, as the different agencies – such as the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Energy – decide who will receive award grants and contracts.

The money may be given to a state government or it may go directly to an institution. In either case, the agencies are required to bring that information to the Recovery.gov team, the Web site states, so it can be made public.

Reporters will be able to search the site by state or Congressional district. There is also an option to look up federal contractors or other potential federal dollar recipients.

But some government watchdog groups say the site is not transparent enough.

Craig Jennings, federal fiscal policy analyst for OMB Watch, said that Recovery.gov only skims the surface when it comes to transparency. His organization co-chairs the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery – an alliance of groups from across the political spectrum that came together to promote accountability on behalf of institutions receiving stimulus spending.

Jennings said that the coalition’s biggest complaint is that the Web site will only follow the money up to the first level of subcontracting. After that, he said, the trail will vanish.

For example, if a road builder gets a contract on a project, he or she may choose to buy concrete and machinery from another business, or choose to subcontract the job all together. That business, which benefits from stimulus dollars, Jennings said, would not be listed on Recovery.gov under the current guidelines.

“Seeing how the money is being spent is critical to understanding how the government is performing,” Jennings said. “It’s key to holding them responsible.”

At the state level
If states are willing, the solution to the subcontracting problem is easy, said Pete Sepp, vice president for policy and communications at the National Taxpayers Union.

More than 20 states already have spending database Web sites that follow funding on the state level and several others are planning such tools. One example is Colorado, which has plans to monitor stimulus spending in a searchable database. The site is expected to be operational later this month. The state has also launched a Web site fully dedicated to the federal recovery package, Colorado.gov/Recovery, providing the latest news updates. With these sites in place, states have the infrastructure for attaining transparency on their own, Sepp said.

The tax union is leaning on officials at all levels of state and federal government to get the information online. In the meantime, the union sponsors a wiki site, ShowMeTheSpending.org, which provides transparency information on each state.

At a more local level, there’s another wiki site, StimulusWatch.org, set up by a senior research fellow at George Mason University. The site asks users to find, discuss and rate “shovel ready” projects submitted by The United States Conference of Mayors in its “Mainstreet Economic Recovery Report.” These are projects that the mayors would like to see funded by federal stimulus dollars.

Reporters can search for a project by city or state. It also ranks them – based on user feedback – by which are the most critical to the country (at the time of publication: a veteran’s nursing home in Cleveland), to those least critical (doorbell installation for the elderly in Laurel, Miss.)

Peter Snyder, a contract programmer who helped create the site, says that StimulusWatch.org has now received more than 1 million unique visitors. Not bad for a site that took less than a month and about $80 to build.

“I think this is the most honest way of going about it,” he said. “We are asking people on a micro-level, ‘Is this useful or not?’”

Snyder thinks Recovery.gov is a good idea, but says it doesn’t ask the American people to weigh in on specific projects. Public opinion, he believes, is vital to the process.

“That what’s important,” he said, “Finding out what the American people want and what they need. In my opinion, there’s nothing more valuable than people discussing what’s needed in their communities.”

W.J. Hennigan is a former intern at the Reynolds Center. He now covers business for The Los Angeles Times.