There’s been a lot of news about stimulus reporting the last few weeks. A lot of it has focused on jobs created or saved; that’s understandable since that was a major point of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is the stimulus’ grown-up name. The federal stimulus web site, Recovery.gov,  has posted the first compilation of stimulus grants, loans, and contracts, which covers the first six months under the act. The reports exclude funds allocated directly to individuals through such mechanisms as increased food stamp benefits, extended Unemployment Insurance, Medicaid payments, and tax cuts.

The STAR Coalition of organizations promoting accountability in the recovery praised this effort:

Our groups can now follow the money in ways they never could before and will use it to engage their policy-makers and build a recovery that benefit communities. We will also use the data to actively engage the public to better understand how the Recovery Act is impacting our communities, and how taxpayers can advocate to improve the Recovery Act and other government investments in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

In October, federal agencies, grantees, and contractors who are getting some of the stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or ARRA) money are required to submit six month reports. This post points you to places you can see reports or summaries of them and includes some analysis and further thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »

Our new Stimulus Update looks at the $52 billion in education funding in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA, better known as the stimulus). The education programs, in contrast to most other ARRA funds coming to state and local governments, mainly consist of a two-year increase to existing programs that are heavy on operating, not capital, costs. Some examples are:

• Increased Pell Grants for college students ($93 million so far in Oklahoma);
• More funding for special education, education for schools serving low-income students, and vocational rehabilitation ($276 million in Oklahoma); and
• Expanding Early Head Start programs and serving more children at existing Head Start centers (at least $28 million in Oklahoma). Read the rest of this entry »

Six months into the federal stimulus program (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA), most of the discussion has centered  on infrastructure projects and the impact on economic recovery and jobs, if any. Today, we’d like to focus on a stimulus program that has the potential to help jump start the economy, and continue paying off years down the road. Read the rest of this entry »

As the debate about the speed and impact of stimulus spending rages on, Good Jobs First is taking on the less glamorous but equally important task of assessing accountability in state spending of funds from the stimulus bill (more formally, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA). They’ve launched the STAR (States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery) Coalition, a national web site that assesses state efforts to inform citizens about ARRA spending.

Accountability is essential for any government program. Taxpayers cannot determine whether their resources are being used appropriately unless they can tell what is being spent, where it is spent, who is benefiting from the spending, and what is being accomplished. Congress and President Obama built unprecedented accountability tools into ARRA. If carried out faithfully, these tools will help us determine not just if the stimulus money is spent fast, but if it is spent right.

This week, STAR released a report that gave states two grades – one for a state’s main ARRA website and one for its reporting on transportation spending. Results are mixed.

Some state ARRA sites support the President’s promise that the $787 billion stimulus plan will be carried out with “an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability.” Other state sites are half-hearted efforts that provide residents little useful data on the largest federal stimulus since the New Deal.

Oklahoma comes out below average in STAR’s ratings. Oklahoma’s main site does a good job of centralizing program information and showing how funds are allocated in the state, but falls short in showing where money is being spent, which projects are being funded, and who is getting contracts. To this, we’d add that the site has an excellent compendium of news releases on the stimulus, but the site is  not always kept up to date.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) site fares better in STAR’s rating, but still lags behind other states. It provides detail on individual projects and contracts, but offers no summary information on how much is being spent in a county, with a single contractor, or even how much is for new roads vs. resurfacing.

Also this week, OK Policy released its  second Stimulus Update, which evaluates over $700 million in ARRA infrastructure funding in Oklahoma. Nearly $400 million in Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT)  projects, mainly resurfacing of state highways, are under contract and spending has topped $40 million. Federal, state, local, and tribal governments will be replacing buses, rehabilitating airport runways and dams and flood control structures, and expanding water and waste water systems. Infrastructure programs, which make up eight percent of all ARRA spending, can help Oklahoma’s economic recovery and pave the way for economic growth and lower costs in the future. With improvements in our accountability efforts, we’ll be able to tell when and where projects are being funded, who is building them, and what they are accomplishing.

Our stimulus page includes the previous Stimulus Update, as well as our earlier stimulus issue brief and fact sheet and links to valuable ARRA resources.

OK Policy is pleased to launch a new monthly Stimulus Update publication. Each month we will take a quick look at one set of federal stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA) programs. Each issue includes a short review of the program and its funding and rules. Then we address the status of the program in Oklahoma: Where are we in the funding process? How do we compare to other states? How do we plan to use the money? How much have we received and spent? Graphs show how funds are allocated and track the speed at which funds are flowing.

Our first issue looks at the two biggest stimulus programs, which provide states with federal funding for education, Medicaid, and other programs to help make up for falling state revenue.You’ll find out how these programs helped maintain state services, which agencies benefited, and how we compare to other states.

There are many other sources of stimulus news and information you may want to be aware of. Our new stimulus page includes links to many sources and we’ll update it as we find new ones. Here are some high points:

• Oklahoma’s state recovery site, http://www.recovery.ok.gov, has been expanded and improved recently. It includes recent agency news releases and links to six state agency recovery pages. Several of these agencies have been improving their sites so taxpayers can get a better idea of how money is being used and so local and nonprofit service providers can apply for appropriate funding.
• Stateline.org, a news service concentrating on state government issues, has created a new page, http://www.stateline.org/live/static/The_Stimulus_and_the_States, which provides charts of how the stimulus is divided up and when it is expected to be spent, along with links to state stimulus oversight efforts and news stories.
• Closer to home, the Tulsa World has created a new stimulus tracker page, which puts all the World stimulus stories in what place, http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/category.aspx?l=stimulus_tracker.

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