National Reporting Project: Watchdog the Stimulus Covering the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

One request from us  APME really wants to collect and highlight your work on the stimulus  Please links to stories to:   Your reporting can serve as a model for others covering this massive story

Where is this money going?  $16 billion in federal contracts  Data released 10/16  $280 billion given to state and local governments  Data released 10/30  Where you can get the data

Recovery.gov’s Download Center

Click and unzip

What you get  Grants: more than 142,000 records  Loans: 710 records  Contracts: 62,000 records  94 columns of data in these files

An important resource  We won’t go through every field but…  Recovery.gov has a User Guide  Gives help on what’s in the field  Some descriptions very clear  Others not so great

Some important fields  funding_agency_ name  recipient_name  award_amount  Who’s giving, who’s getting, how much

What’s being funded  award_description  Can be very detailed  …or not  project_description  Very detailed…  …not  project_name  Note that the second one is an entry from an incorrect field

More on descriptions  Not all give this much detail, but there’s more detail in these records than we usually see  EPA funding for N.D. Dept. of Health  Let’s look the same project, but with more fields…

Jobs  Data also shows what kinds of jobs have been or will be created  And provides a number  Big cautionary note

Numbers aren’t always what they seem  Be careful using these numbers  Make sure to ask what’s being counted as a job

How is the state counting them?  Georgia using a different method to count jobs  What constitutes a “saved job?-”

Note the number of teacher jobs

Note also who’s being counted  Tenured professors?  Isn’t it impossible to lay them off?  How are those “jobs saved?”

Other useful fields  project_status  total_fed_arra_received  How much money actually spent  project_activity_desc  Also a code for this  infrastructure_rationale  Why are we funding this?

Who’s working where?  recipient_zip_code is the left column  pop_postal_cd is the right column  pop=place of performance  Are out of state contractors getting stimulus funds?

One last note on the data  There are a lot of problems with it  AP is working on the data, trying to get it right  If AP gets it into good shape, will release it to member papers  As you find problems and write about them, let us know  We’re all in this together

Types of stories you can find  Weatherization program from DOE  $5 billion spent overall  Local program got $132 million  Who got half the money?  Politically active builders group

What projects are approved  A bridge in Town of Arena, Wis.  10 cars a day use it  Spending $426,000 to replace it  All paid with stimulus dollars

Who’s getting contracts?

How many jobs were created or saved?  Major purpose of stimulus  Hard to count a saved job  States report job numbers  Who will check them?

Was political influence a factor?  Low traffic border crossing gets upgrade at the behest of powerful Senator  Are state and local pols doing the same thing?  We’re guessing yes

Background recipients…  Joint venture of Jacobs Engineering & Stantec  Awarded a $220,535 contract  Precisely 0.63 jobs created or saved

Do they have legal problems?  Class action suit  Workers sue for:  Unpaid overtime  Unpaid wages  Other violations  Proposed $4.25 million settlement  Still pending

Are they politically active?  OpenSecrets.org tells us:  They have a PAC  Top contributor to 38 members  Including appropriators  Spent a lot on lobbyists

Company gives to state & local pols  Sources:  State ethics committee sites  Nat’l Inst. on Money in State Politics  Gives to St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay  Gives to lots of state races around country

Do a lot of this legwork online  Lots of disclosure on the Web  Government sources available  Nonpartisan nonprofits too  Most information free

AP will do national overviews  Find all the bridges getting stimulus funds in your readership area

Slicing and localizing data  Interactive map from AP  See jobs created…  By state  By industry  By county

Sunlight puts data on your iPhone  App that lets you see stimulus recipients

But you can tell us…  Is the stimulus working?  Is it well managed?  Is it helping?  What’s working?  What’s not?

Always feel free to contact us Bill Allison , ext 224 Matt Apuzzo