Recovery Act Coalition Applauds Recipient Reporting as Milestone in Government Transparency; Calls for More Data to Assess Effectiveness and Fairness of Stimulus

October 30, 2009

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery (the STAR Coalition at www.AccountableRecovery.org) today issued the following statement concerning the completion of the first round of American Recovery and Reinvestment (ARRA) Act recipient data:

"ARRA is the most transparent federal spending bill in U.S. history. Today marks a new era in open government. For the first time, citizens have easily accessible online data showing how a major spending program affects every community in the country.

"Yet today's jobs numbers represent only a small portion of the Act's impact. They do not include the impact of personal or corporate tax breaks, social safety net programs such as food stamps, Medicaid aid to the states, or payments to individuals such as Social Security recipients. The numbers also exclude indirect job creation resulting from purchases by ARRA contractors and grantees.

"The data should be evaluated two ways: by what they tell us about the effectiveness of the stimulus in mitigating the recession; and by what they represent for government transparency. Both measures provide grounds for celebration and concern.

"The data clearly show that the Recovery Act's fiscal aid to state and local governments is helping to preserve public services and avert layoffs of teachers and other essential public employees. Parts of those grants -- and many other programs such as transportation infrastructure and school rehabilitation -- are also boosting private-sector contractor jobs.

"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 benefits all 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.

"However, there are inconsistencies and omissions in the data that we will urge the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to fix.

"For example, the data also do not reveal who is getting the jobs (race, gender, or neighborhood) or how good the jobs are. Moreover, the data do not cover all sub-contractors and sub-grantees. The fact that the state ratios of dollars per job in some cases vary by a factor of ten suggests that states are not all calculating employment impacts in a consistent way.

"Therefore, we will urge the Office of Management and Budget to amend its guidance on Recovery Act jobs reporting. Specifically, we will ask that recipients be required to report the race, gender and nine-digit residential ZIP code of workers receiving Recovery Act jobs. We will also ask that recipients be required to report wages, hours of work, and health care benefits provided to Recovery Act workers.

"We will also ask that reporting requirements be extended to every ultimate employer that receives Recovery Act monies: every sub-contractor and sub-grantee.

"We need such data to determine if ARRA is producing quality jobs equitably distributed among different communities and population groups."

The STAR Coalition is a national network of groups working in states and cities to ensure that Recovery Act spending is accountable and effective. It includes leading national groups for green jobs, smart growth, good government, unemployment insurance, community organizing, state economic policy, and equitable development. See members at www.accountablerecovery.org/coalition and an "experts Rolodex" at www.AccountableRecovery.org/arra-experts.

The STAR Coalition works closely with the Coalition for An Accountable Recovery www.coalitionforanaccountablerecovery.org, which is spearheading the debate with OMB over the quality of Recovery.gov data.

SOURCE States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery