5 stimulus programs to watchdog locally now

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $400,000 for solar-panel installation in Ohio's Wayne National Forest, which supplied this photo to Flickr.com.

LAS VEGAS — AP investigative reporter Matt Apuzzo offers five economic-stimulus programs to look into and three questions to ask about each. Here are the five:   

• Health information technology. The stimulus contains money for medical electronic records: $2 billion for regional extension centers, $27 billion for hundreds of thousands of doctors’ offices and 5,000 hospitals, and $1 billion for comparative-effectiveness research on various treatments, according to Fred Schulte of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, who spoke earlier.  In addition, on May 4, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded $220 million to 15 “beacon communities” to be models of electronic-medical-records adoption. They are Tulsa, Okla.; Stoneville, Miss.; Brewer, Maine; Danville, Pa.; Salt Lake City; Indianapolis; Spokane, Wash.; New Orleans; Rochester, Minn.; Providence, R.I.; Grand Junction, Colo.; Concord, N.C.; San Diego; Hilo, Hawaii; and Buffalo, N.Y. “Will they live up to the hype?” Apuzzo asked. For more info, see the government’s websites at HealthIT.hhs.gov and www.hhs.gov/recovery,which has state-by-state data.
• Education. Hundreds of millions in competitive and discretionary grants are being made to local school districts. The awards’ criteria are at www.ed.gov/recovery. Apuzzo said to measure your schools performance by the government’s own standards in awarding the grant. “Has your school really shown a history of increasing dropout rates or improving performance, or are they just fudging the numbers?” he asked. Many grants are supposed to demonstrate best practices for the future. “Are they showing cutting-edge stuff? Or is it just plugging the gaps?” he asked.
• Small-business loans. Unlike the other programs, no specific data is available on these loans on recovery.gov. You can get individual-loan data from the Small Business Administration headquarters or your regional SBA office. However, the SBA is required to report to Congress on the misuse of recovery loans, which Apuzzo describes as “an often unfulfilled obligation.”
• Transportation. The Department of Transportation is making $1.5 billion in discretionary grants. Specific award winners and losers are available at www.dot.gov/recovery. Again, hold the projects to the government’s own standards in judging their effectiveness.  
• Weatherization. He said a shortage of contractors to do this work exists, and the selection process for contractors is susceptible to political influence. He pointed to the Indianapolis Star’s coverage.

And here are the three questions to ask about these programs:   

• Is what’s getting the money a priority?
• Who is doing the work?
• Is it making a difference?

Jennifer LaFleur of ProPublica.org offered these useful websites:   

• For basic tracking of the $792 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: recovery.gov, USAspending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System and ProPublica’s links to state recovery sites.
• ProPublica’s tools include stimulus-spending progress, county data, a tool kit and backgrounding a company.

She also offered some websites to consult in checking for bad apples among contractors receiving stimulus funds:   

• Debarred federal contractors list for those with previous problems.
• OSHA for safety records.
• Better Business Bureau.
• EPA compliance and enforcement actions.
• Lawsuits in local and federal courts.

You can also go to the job site and check whether any work is happening, how many people are working and who the subcontractors are.