Following federal economic-stimulus funds to your backyard
Reporters Michael Grabell of ProPublica.org and Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offered several online sites that can help you track economic-stimulus funds to your state or county.
“Stimulus is a completely local story,” Grabell said. “Everywhere you go, you can find an interesting story in your backyard.” |Video and presentation: Michael Grabell and Ben Poston on Covering the Sluggish Recovery. [Presentation starts on Slide 4.]
ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative news site, just updated its Recovery Tracker database this week to provide information on stimulus-fund recipients down to the county level. “The Recovery Tracker includes all the data used on the government’s stimulus Web site, Recovery.gov, and thousands of records the feds didn’t include—the law doesn’t require all recipients to report to Recovery.gov…. Altogether, they’re the most comprehensive publicly available analysis of stimulus spending,” ProPublica says. It will also make the data supporting Recovery Tracker available upon request. “Just fill out this form, and we’ll get you state data within 48 hours,” it says.
Grabell and Poston also suggest these sites to help track stimulus funds:
ProPublica.org reporter Michael Grabell (left) and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ben Poston lead a CAR Conference session on how to track economic-stimulus funds to your county.
- Federal Data Procurement Data System has an Excel spreadsheet of stimulus contracts that is more up to date than Recovery.gov. You can search by city or county and find out if the company is minority-owned. However, it includes only federal projects, not road projects that are contracted by the states.
- fedbizopps.gov provides information on bid solicitations by the federal government.
- USASpending.gov contains information on contracts, grants and loans. “Click on spending, then contracts/grants/loans and advanced search for place of performance,” they advise in a tipsheet.
- Excluded Parties List System contains contractors and others who have been prohibited from receiving federal money. Check this database for stimulus recipients who have had problems in the past. Local governments also have lists of ineligible recipients.
- Federal Audit Clearinghouse has detailed reports on nonprofits and other federal grantees. The Sunlight Foundation matched up this database with stimulus recipients.
- Cash for Clunkers has information on the vehicles traded in and bought under this program, which was extended with stimulus funds. In ProPublica’s Recovery Tracker, each county’s page has a button that allows you to click and see which dealers benefited the most from the program.
- NIH grants database offers information about research, including the principal investigator, funded with stimulus funds.
- New America Media put together a database of SBA loans that included the race and gender of recipients of ARC loans under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ARC stands for America’s Recovery Capital, and the program can lend up to $35,000 per borrower interest-free. It found few minorities had received loans.
- Starting in March 2010, states have to report monthly and quarterly data to the Energy Department on the number of housing units weatherized, including demographic information for each household.
- The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) produces 50-page bimonthly reports for 16 states and the District of Columbia on how each one is using stimulus money. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Contact Ben Poston at bposton@journalsentinel.com and Michael Grabell at michael.grabell@propublica.org.
