These are the key findings of “Money for Something: Job Creation and Job Quality Standards in State Economic Development Subsidy Programs”, a 51-state “report card” study published today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit, non-partisan research center based in Washington, DC.

“With unemployment still so high, taxpayers have a right to expect that economic development investments create significant numbers of quality jobs,” said Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy. “The days of ‘no strings attached’ are largely gone, but the fine print in many states is still full of gaps and loopholes.”

Oklahoma was found to do the 6th best job of applying job standards to major subsidy programs, coming behind only Nevada, North Carolina, Vermont, Iowa, and Maryland.  Among Oklahoma’s individual subsidies, the Quality Jobs and 21st Century Quality Jobs Programs earned the highest marks, with 109/100 and 95/100 points respectively.

Other Oklahoma subsidies did not fare so well. The lowest performing Oklahoma program was the Investment/New Jobs Income Tax Credit, which received only 25/100 points. This credit was placed under a two-year moratorium in 2010 and is now under review by the Task Force for the Study of Tax Credits and Economic Incentives. At a meeting of the task force, Rep. David Dank called the lack of caps, controls, or transparency for the Investment/New Jobs credit “a disgrace for the state.” The program has an estimated $140 million in awarded but unused credits, with no limits on when companies can claim them.

To prevent the wasting of public money on handouts to businesses that may have little to no return for the state, we should extend the strong eligibility standards of the Quality Jobs program to every subsidy that is offered, or eliminate them entirely. And even the most well-designed subsidy should have a sunset provision and an annual cap so it doesn’t break the budget. (For more on this, see OK Policy’s issue brief on making tax breaks more accountable.)

A tax break not mentioned in the Good Jobs First report but especially relevant to Oklahoma is the gross production tax rebate for oil and gas producers. We pay out millions of dollars in these rebates with no job creation requirements and no guarantees that we are not paying oil and gas companies to do what they would have done regardless of the handout.

Money for Something rates the performance standards and job quality requirements of 238 key subsidy programs from the 50 states and the District of Columbia that together cost more than $11 billion a year. Each program is rated on a scale of 0 to 100 (with extra credit for advanced features). The scores for the programs in each state are averaged to derive a state score. The report offers these policy recommendations:

• Every subsidy should contain job creation, job retention or training requirements. Those should be strengthened by provisions barring employers from shifting existing jobs from other facilities and mandating that the jobs be kept in place for a minimum period.
• Every job or training position in a subsidized facility should be covered by a wage standard, preferably tied to labor market averages and structured in a way that raises pay above market levels. They should also offer health coverage in which the employer contributes to the cost of the premium. These rules should also apply to part-time, temporary and contract workers.
• Decent job standards do not guarantee that a program’s benefits will outweigh its costs. Sometimes the only sensible course of action is to eliminate a program altogether.

Note: Standards such as those rated here mean little if they are not enforced. In a companion report to be issued soon, Good Jobs First will grade the states on their enforcement practices.

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Tax expenditures are a widely utilized policy tool, with each legislative session seeing the introduction of dozens of bills calling for new or expanded tax breaks for individuals and businesses.  Proponents of most specific tax break proposals tend to make the argument in their favor on one or both of the two following grounds:

• Tax preferences are instruments for accomplishing worthwhile public purposes. If policymakers agree, for example, that encouraging individuals to save for a college education is a worthy goal, then allowing a tax deduction or deferral for some or all of one’s contributions to a 529 College Savings account may be the appropriate policy tool.  Tax policy can also be used as a way to target assistance and benefits to groups deemed worthy of support, because of such factors as age, income level, disability, military service, or occupation. Providing assistance through the tax code is often seen as a more effective, less expensive, and politically more palatable mechanism for providing support than operating a government spending program.
• Tax preferences are needed to encourage economic development.  Oklahoma, like other states, has adopted a plethora of tax credits, exemptions, and incentive payments that support certain kinds of economic activity. Tax preferences are generally justified as worthwhile when targeted to economically risky endeavors, emerging companies and sectors, export-oriented companies, and companies that will create high-paying jobs. In some cases, the explicit argument is that in a world of mobile capitol and competitive localities, businesses will locate or move elsewhere in the absence of incentives.  As long as other jurisdictions are offering incentives, failure to “play the game” is tantamount to unilateral economic development disarmament.

Yet if tax expenditures can serve a necessary and justifiable means to accomplish certain public policy goals, they also raise serious problems and concerns, which include:

• Hidden Expenditures. Tax expenditures are largely invisible.  Unlike direct spending programs, tax expenditures do not require annual appropriations or legislative review.  Even with greater disclosure in recent years, it remains hard to get consistent and reliable information about the cost and beneficiaries of tax breaks.
• Efficiency. While incentives are intended to get an individual or business to do something it would not otherwise do, it is often hard to establish whether a tax advantage makes a decisive difference in influencing behavior.  Good Jobs First, among the most vocal critics of state incentives policies, emphasizes that, “A mountain of evidence suggest that development subsidies are often abused by companies that would have done exactly what they did anyway.”In many instances, only a portion of the total cost of an incentive will produce an incremental increase in the behavior being promoted; the remainder is “wasted” as a pure subsidy or giveaway. This is also true of tax breaks intended to influence individual behavior: for example, at least some of those claiming a tax credit for first-time homebuyers would have purchased a home irrespective of the tax break.
• Accountability. While tax incentive programs are generally created as a way to promote specific public goals, such as capital investment or the creation of high-paying jobs, there are frequently weak accountability provisions to ensure that goals are met.  Many incentive programs impose few, if any, requirements that companies must meet to qualify for benefits, provide little ongoing monitoring or auditing, and rarely include oversight provisions or sanctions that can be imposed on companies that fail to uphold their commitments. As a result, some states have adopted “clawback” provisions as a component of incentive programs that require companies to refund all or part of their incentives if they fail to meet specified job or investment targets, or leave the state after receiving incentives.
• Neutrality. Tax neutrality is the widely recognized principle that tax policies should “not interfere with the natural flow of capital toward its most productive use.” The practice of offering preferential tax treatment to certain individuals, businesses, and organizations rather than others tends to substitute political choices for market decisions in the allocation of resources.  In many cases, there does not appear to be any clear or consistent reason why some economic sectors or activities are granted preferential tax treatment while others are not.  These provisions can create competitive differences between similarly-situated firms and individuals. For instance, two waste recycling firms operating in the same county may be subject to different tax treatment based on one having received tax incentives to relocate, while the other has not.
• Equity. While certain tax expenditures, such as the standard deduction or the earned income tax credit, provide preferential treatment for lower-income individuals, many of the largest tax expenditures, such as deductions for home-mortgage interest, pension contributions, and college savings, primarily benefit upper-middle class Americans. This is because many lower-income families do not have income tax liability against which to claim deductions, or do not have sufficient income to allocate to preferential forms of spending.  A study by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institute Tax Policy Center found that households in the top fifth of income received twice as much benefit from federal tax expenditures as did households in the bottom fifth.In Oklahoma, data supplied by the Oklahoma Tax Commission revealed that some 72 percent of households claiming a tax deductions for contributions to the state’s 529 college savings program in 2005 had annual income over $75,000, a group that represents  just 14 percent of total Oklahoma households (see the Chart on page 6 of this issue brief).
• Fiscal Impact. The fiscal impact of tax expenditures is significant. Nationally, the Tax Policy Center study calculated the cost of tax expenditures claimed by individuals at $760.5 billion in 2007, more than the total budget for either national defense or non-defense discretionary spending. The total cost of tax expenditures for which the OTC was able to determine the cost  exceeded $5.6 billion in 2008, which was not much less than that year’s  total appropriated state budget ($7.1 billion). This total is revenue that is unavailable to sustain public services in Oklahoma or to lower tax rates. More significantly, perhaps, the cost of particular tax expenditures is generally unlimited. Typically, deductions and credits can be claimed in unlimited amounts so long as the credit’s eligibility criteria are met. If an exemption or incentive proves popular, it can have a large and unanticipated impact on the budget. An example cited in a recent national report is of an Arizona tax credit for vehicles that can run on alternative fuels; the credit was expected to cost $3 million to $10 million per year but ended up costing $680 million in its first year.In Oklahoma, when businesses uncovered a way to exploit a loophole in the Venture Capital Tax Credit, the cost of the credit soared from $2 million to $66 million in one year.

• Local Impact. Tax policies adopted by the state legislature can have a large impact on the revenues available to local governments. With a few exceptions, the sales tax base for municipal and county governments is set by the state legislature, so that every new sales tax exemption adopted at the Capitol erodes the sales tax base of cities and counties across the state. On property taxes, while the Legislature cannot directly enact new exemptions, it can and does send proposals for statewide property tax exemptions to votes of the people.

As much as tax preferences can be faulted on all these grounds, incentives and subsidies will still be defended as necessary tools for states competing against one another to attract or retain investment and jobs.  But as Arthur J. Rolnick, the Senior Vice-President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has contended, this competition “interferes with interstate commerce and undermines the national economic union by misallocating resources and causing states to provide too few public goods.” Even if the subsidies war as a whole leaves no winners other than the companies that can wring concessions from state and local governments, states are unlikely to withdraw unilaterally. Accordingly, Rolnick is among those who have called on Congress to exercise its Commerce Clause power to put an end to  the economic war  among the states. Conservatives and libertarian supporters of free-market principles have also consistently urged states to abandon the use of subsidies as a form of economic development.

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The report, titled Show Us the Subsidies: An Evaluation of State Government Online Disclosure of Economic Development Subsidies, evaluates the performance of all 50 states in making available online information on companies receiving state and local tax breaks, cash payments, and other subsidies.  In the press release accompanying the report, Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy points out that the state fiscal crisis has provided an impetus for increased disclosure of subsidy programs in many states:

With states being forced to make painful budget decisions, taxpayers expect economic development spending to be fair and transparent… Claims that sunshine would hurt a state’s business climate have been discredited, trumped by people’s rising expectations about government information being online.

In addition to giving states overall grades, the study rates the reporting practices of 245 key economic development subsidy programs from around the country based on the online disclosure of information such as company‐specific dollar amounts, job‐creation and wage‐rate numbers, and the geographic location of subsidized facilities. Programs are also evaluated in terms of how easy it is to find and use the online data.  Across the nation, nineteen subsidy programs received total scores above 75 out of 100. Nine of the top 13 rated programs are in Illinois, North Carolina and Connecticut.

Oklahoma was evaluated on five subsidy programs, the most important of which are the Quality Jobs Program and the Investment/New Jobs Credit. The results were mixed:

• The Quality Jobs Program provides quarterly cash rebates funded by personal income tax withholding for firms which meet job creation, wage and benefit requirements. The program paid out $60.6 million in 2009 (it has since paid out $54.6 million in 2010). Quality Jobs received a score of 59/100, equaling the average score of all programs providing online disclosure.  Quality Jobs earned most of its points for disclosing the subsidy value and the location of subsidized companies.  Annual reports on the program are available on the Oklahoma Tax Commission website.
• The Investment/New Jobs Tax Credit provides tax credits for businesses which meet job creation, wage, and investment criteria.  The credit cost $118.7 million in 2008.  Investment/New Jobs credit received a score of 49/100, earning full points for disclosing the value of the subsidy in a clear and searchable disclosure site. Information on recipients for 2007 through 2009 is available from the Open Books website.

Both programs lost points for failing to disclose information on jobs/training outcomes and wage rate/payroll outcomes.  In addition, the absence of information on the location of subsidized companies claiming Investment/New Jobs credits and the absence of a separate, searchable database for Quality Jobs recipients were among the variables leading to lower scores for those programs.

Oklahoma’s other three programs – 21st Century Quality Jobs, which became effective November 2009; the Opportunity Fund, created in 2006 but currently on hold; and Training for Industry, a program that reimburses companies for providing customized workforce training  – have no online disclosure and consequently received 0 points. By adding and averaging the scores for all five programs, Oklahoma received an average score of 22, which earned it a grade of “D” in the report for its online disclosure performance (Click here for detailed information on how Oklahoma’s programs were scored).

Overall, this new report confirms that Oklahoma has made strides in increasing the public’s access to information on which companies are receiving economic development subsidies, especially with the launch of the OpenBooks website. However, the state is clearly doing less well in gathering and making available information on the effectiveness of these subsidies in promoting economic development through job creation and investment.  As the ongoing state budget crisis keeps a light trained on subsidies, we believe the following recommendations proposed by OK Policy in our February report on tax expenditures remain more relevant than ever:

• Strengthen ongoing monitoring and evaluation of existing tax credits;
• Develop  a unified economic development budget that compiles information on all forms of development spending, including direct expenditures and tax incentives;
• Establish formal eligibility processes for new and existing incentive programs;
• Promote accountability by creating and enforcing standards for companies receiving incentives;
• Limit the cost impact of existing and future tax incentives through caps on overall amounts.

Those interested in learning more about state economic development subsidies can explore two new online tools released by Good Jobs First:  Subsidy Tracker, a searchable database that brings together subsidy recipient information from numerous state governments; and Accountable USA, a set of webpages on each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia summarizing their track record on subsidies (Oklahoma’s page).

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In this context, there is an urgent need for a balanced approach to the state’s budget shortfall that includes identifying possible sources of additional one-time or ongoing revenue. Governor Henry, in his FY ’11 Executive Budget,  proposed over $700 million in revenue enhancing measures, along with additional cuts across all of state government, savings from efficiencies and consolidation, and the use of remaining stimulus and reserve fund balances. Not all of the Governor’s ideas are likely to gain traction, but they provide a good starting point for an urgently-needed  discussion. In this and subsequent blog posts, OK Policy will explore some of the most promising policy ideas for generating additional revenue that would go at least part of the way to closing the budget deficit.

One straightforward revenue-generating idea involves limiting the discount that the state pays retailers for collecting the state sales tax. Currently Oklahoma is among 26 states that provides vendors some form of compensation, or discount, for collecting and remitting sales tax. As the policy organization Good Jobs First has noted:

When stores were small and records were mostly kept by hand, a plausible case could be made that retailers deserved some financial assistance from states to offset the costs associated with sales tax collection and remittance. But even then, policymakers in many states never accepted the argument.

Of the 45 states with a sales tax, 19 do not provide a vendor discount, while 26, including Oklahoma, do. Oklahoma provides retailers 2.25 percent of sales tax collections if they file electronically, or 1.25 percent otherwise, up to an monthly maximum discount of $3,300 per sales tax permit-holder.  Among the 13 states that cap the total discount, Oklahoma’s cap is the second highest. Arkansas, by comparison, allows a discount rate of 2.0 percent, with a  cap of $833 per month. The Oklahoma Tax Commission calculates the cost of the vendor discount at $25.9 million for CY 2008, more than three-quarters of which went to the 4 percent of Oklahoma businesses that collected over $100,000 in sales tax.

Even though businesses receive no payment for assisting in the collection of other taxes, such as income tax withholding, a good case can be made for not doing away with the vendor discount entirely, especially since the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, of which Oklahoma is a part, requires states to provide “reasonable compensation” to all retailers. At the same time, the improved ease and lower cost of sales tax collection as a result of technological advances argues for lowering the amount of the vendor discount.

One proposal, advanced by UCO Economics Professor Mickey Hepner, would be to maintain the current vendor discount rate but substantially lower the annual cap. Governor Henry in his budget proposes lowering the vendor discount rate to 1 percent for all vendors, while lowering the monthly cap only slightly, to $2,250. The Governor’s budget estimates savings of $10 million from this change. An alternate approach, used in several states, is to provide a higher discount rate up to a certain threshold and a lower rate above that up to the total cap. Such an approach would provide greater benefits to small businesses, while larger retail changes, as Hepner argues, “would barely register the change.”

Reducing the vendor discount would go only a short part of the distance in bridging the budget gap, but it is sensible policy that would align our tax system with modern technological realities. It should be considered and enacted by this year’s Legislature.

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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.

The coalition expressed some reservations about the reporting effort, especially as it treats jobs. There are some great features to stimulus reporting and I think it’s worth your time to look around. On this page is a great national summary that tells you which states are getting jobs and spending money, and how far along the projects are (not very). This map will help you learn more about ARRA’s impact on Oklahoma. So far it’s  saved or created 8,764 jobs, according to the agencies and companies that were awarded funding. The map even lets you find projects in your own neighborhood by entering your zip code. There’s also a good state summary page.

Unless you are smarter and/or more stubborn than I, however, there are also lots of things you can’t find. If you want one list of all the grants and contracts in Oklahoma, you have your work cut out. The two options I saw were either to browse through hundreds of pages of grants without totals, or else to download, combine, and sort several very large spreadsheet files. I left this experience confident that we have a general picture of what the stimulus is doing for the nation and our state, but not sure I could find results for a specific program or a specific school district. I also had lots of questions about definitions and how reliable the reports might be; there’s no effort to address these issues on the site.

STAR recently posted a blog entry summarizing what some of their members and related state organizations are finding as they dig through the data more carefully. Among the concerns are that some states seem to be under-reporting the jobs they’ve created, that most of the jobs saved are attributed to capital cities, and that there is no reporting on grant applications that are still in process. They (and I) may be asking for too much reporting and detail, but there’s already plenty being reported that is not all that informative, so it might be worth shifting gears for the next set of reports.

The stimulus promised untold and previously unforeseen transparency and accountability. So far, each new step brings more reports, but fails to fulfill the promise. The stimulus could, and in our view almost certainly is, making a difference in Oklahoma’s economy and investing in a brighter future. We just don’t know how exactly to find out yet.

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One common argument for tax incentives is that in the competitive world of state economic development, states that fail to offer tax breaks to entice companies to invest or stay put will see investment and jobs shift elsewhere. Critics, such as Good Jobs First, view this “economic war among the states” as precisely the problem, amounting to a “ruinous zero-sum race to the bottom that benefits only footloose corporations while undermining state and local budgets, especially schools and infrastructure.”  Good Jobs First has blogged recently on two prominent examples where costly tax credit deals intended to lure jobs and investment have instead ended up leading to a major plant shutdown (Dell in North Carolina) and a criminal probe (film tax credits in Iowa).

Readers interested in a close-to-home example of the costs and drawbacks of state subsidy wars should check out a spirited new paper [PDF] by Jack Norman and Karen Royster, researchers at the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, titled “The Twisted Saga of Mercury Marine”. Oklahomans may remember Mercury Marine as the marine engine manufacturing company that persuaded the Oklahoma Legislature to pass a bill this past session, SB 929, that made the company eligible for tax credits in return for keeping open  its plant in Stillwater. Mercury Marine then used this leverage to wrest concessions for its plant in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and promptly announced the closure of its Stillwater operations.

In addition to winning wage and benefit concessions from the union in Wisconsin to keep their jobs from moving to Oklahoma, the taxpayers of Fond du Lac and Wisconsin were persuaded to cough up as well. According to Norman and Royster:

• Fond du Lac is giving Mercury Marine a $50 million, low-interest publicly financed loan;
• To pay for the loan, Fond du Lac County Board imposed a countywide one-half percent sales tax;
• The Fond du Lac City Council approved a $3 million package of taxpayer-funded incentives;
• The state of Wisconsin is offering additional incentive package that has not yet been divulged.

This is a hefty price for a division of a larger company (Brunswick Corporation) which, Norman and Royster reveal, has seen its stock price fall 71 percent since 2005, laid off 5,300 North American workers,  forced pay freezes for current employees, and imposed steep pay cuts for new hires and employees back from layoffs – all the while continuing to  pay its CEO  in excess of $3 million in 2008.

At least in this instance, the Oklahoma Legislature prudently included a “clawback” provision in its subsidy bill which required Mercury Marine to return over $1 million in payments once it pulled up stakes for Wisconsin.  But while clawback clauses can provide some protection against being shaken down by a few businesses, might it not be time instead for Oklahoma to withdraw from the subsidies war? Oklahoma offers businesses a productive, hard-working labor force, a central location, a low cost-of-living, and among the lowest state and local taxes in the nation. Rather than further erode our tax base through deals that offer questionable returns, the dollars may be more productive if invested in the things that will make Oklahoma more broadly appealing to all businesses – for example, improving teacher quality, workforce development system, transportation infrastructure, and public health. That way we can stop allowing businesses to grab a slice of the pie before agreeing to sit down at the table.

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Last week, a Joint Legislative Task Force created by legislation authored by Rep. David Dank and Sen. Randy Brogdon met to begin examining transferable tax credits. These are  tax incentives where one company qualifies for a tax  and sells that credit for cash to another company that wants to reduce its tax obligations.

According to a presentation by House staff attorney Mark Harter, the “general rule is that a tax credit can only be used by the person or entity who performed some economic activity or who invested money in some way.” Yet the Task Force heard that two of the state’s most notorious transferable tax credits – for non-stop coast-to-coast air service (Great Plains Airline) and for space transportation vehicle providers (Burns Flats spaceport) – provided much weaker standards. In those cases, taxpayers ended up on the hook for tens of millions of dollars for projects that failed (literally) to get off the ground.

But even where eligibility requires performance of certain economic activity, either job creation or capital investment, oversight and compliance is often uncertain. Rep. Dank was especially critical of the state’s coal credit intended for the purchase of Oklahoma mined coal. Businesses and individuals claimed anywhere from $5 million to $12 million in coal credits in 2007. Yet, according to Rep. Dank (quoted in the Journal Record, subscription only):

But there is no evidence that these were ever used to produce more coal or to hire more miners. Instead, tax credits given to the coal industry in Oklahoma were sold to companies that had nothing to do with coal, reducing revenues to the state with no economic gain.

The next meetings of the Task Force will no doubt dig deeper into how particular credits have been used, or misused.

Over the past several years, the state has made genuine progress in improving accountability and transparency of tax incentives.  An Incentives Review Committee, created by statute, has been reviewing major tax credits and making recommendations; their work was responsible, in part, for the decision to allow one of the most expensive and controversial incentive programs, the Venture Capital Credit, to expire at the end of 2008. As we discussed in this blog post, implementation of the Taxpayer Transparency Act (SB 1) led earlier this year to the launch of a searchable online database that generates lists of all individuals and businesses that claimed tax credits (so far information is available only for 2007).  And for the first time ever in the state, the Legislature this session passed a tax credit bill, SB 929,  that included a “clawback provision” allowing for the state to demand repayment of credits in the event that companies failed to uphold their obligations – as promptly occurred when Mercury Marine announced it was pulling up stakes from Stillwater and returning over $1 million in payments.

So what more can be done? One interesting idea was proposed recently by Good Jobs First, a national policy organization that focuses on corporate accountability:

We also need responsible budgeting. Let’s also require each state to enact a Unified Development Budget: an annual report to the legislature itemizing all forms of spending for jobs—both appropriations and tax expenditures. Tax breaks typically dwarf appropriations by ratios of 4 to 1, 6 to 1, 8 to 1 or more, so we need the whole iceberg up on the table for an annual check-up.

While Oklahoma has made strides in making available information on tax incentives with the Taxpayer Transparency Act and biannual Tax Expenditure Report, it remains difficult, if not impossible, to find comprehensive information on the full array of tax credits, especially regarding credits claimed on taxes other than the income tax (insurance premium tax, gross production tax, ad valorem tax).  A Unified Development Budget such as proposed by Good Jobs First could go a good ways towards helping pull the various pieces together into a single picture – and ultimately help policymakers with the tough but essential goal of reaching informed decisions about which tax credits are working to promote good jobs and investment, and which are purely handouts to special interests.

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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.

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Last week I had the opportunity to attend a conference hosted by Good Jobs First that was specifically concerned with developing strategies for an accountable recovery. Good Jobs First is working closely with the advocacy organization OMB Watch and with national and state coalitions across the country to help ensure that citizens have access to comprehensive and timely information on stimulus funds. The national partners, known as the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, and the state partners, known as the States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery (STAR) coalition, have both launched websites that collect key documents and news releases related to the Recovery Act; the STAR website also has a blog.  Both coalitions have a particularly strong interest in watchdogging which companies are benefiting from contracts (and to the extent possible, sub-contracts) funded with stimulus dollars.

In addition to these two advocacy websites, both the Obama Administration and Governor Henry are maintaining stimulus websites. The federal site, www.recovery.gov, allows users to track implementation of the Recovery Act by agency and by state. Particularly helpful are weekly financial and major activity reports being submitted by each federal agency (available for download as Excel spreadsheets) of  funds that have been disbursed to state and local governments, as well as other recipients. We know, therefore, that the Department of Housing and Urban Development has paid out $231 million of $4.5 billion total available dollars through April 24th, and that Oklahoma is eligible for $30.4 million in child care block grant funding through ARRA, among other examples.

At the state level, Oklahoma’s Recovery Act website got off to a promising start in February and early March, but appears not to have been updated over the past month. While the Office of State Finance is waiting on federal guidance regarding reporting requirements on funds it has allocated and spent within the state,  it is unfortunate that the website has not been kept current with the streams of information coming from Washington on the amounts and conditions of funding that is being made available through various funding streams. One notable exception is in the area of transportation, where ODOT is posting information on projects that have been awarded with Recovery Act funds. In the area of education funding, however, where the feds have issued extensive guidelines, the state offers but a single link, buried in the middle of the page, while for housing and other areas following the only available links on the state website gets one to an error message for an unavailable report.

Whether one favored the stimulus bill or opposed it, there is a shared interest in insisting on a transparent process and accountable outcomes. But this cannot be a passive or one-way exchange. For the government to do its job well, we, the people, have to do ours as well.

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