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

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

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

Michelle Lee, +1-202-232-1616 ext. 210, mlee@goodjobsfirst.org, for States for
a Transparent and Accountable Recovery