Georgia plots trail for federal stimulus money

Sometimes, the governor’s office receives a simple call from Washington, D.C.

Sometimes, a state agency gets a “check’s in the mail” shout-out from a federal counterpart.

And still other times, the information simply pops up on a Web site, with no bells or whistles.

Georgia has begun to receive its $6.35 billion in federal stimulus money, and the avenues for its delivery may test even a career bureaucrat’s imagination. There is no blueprint, no “one size fits all” guide for when the money is coming or how various agencies are to account for it.

Take this email sent two weeks ago from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security: “Attached please find additional information regarding the Preparedness Grants under the American Recovery and Reinvest Act,” followed by a Web site link.

Everybody clear?

“We’re all learning, the state is learning,” said Jayne Watson, assistant director for Common Cause Georgia.

The $787 billion stimulus package was constructed to pull the nation out of the economic gutter. The money is to create or save jobs and is to be spent largely on projects that are ready to go but may be sitting on the shelf because of the recession. The dollars flow to the states in three different streams, and each one has its own unique requirements on how the money should be spent, tracked and recorded.

And, even then, that process varies by state agency and by project.

There are additional challenges inherent in the process: the money should be spent almost immediately but there must be a good reason for where every dollar went.

“There’s definitely a tension there in that,” said Sarah Beth Gehl, deputy director of the Atlanta-based think tank Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, which is releasing an analysis on how and where Georgia is spending its stimulus money. The report, which will be made available Monday, is based on information from the state agencies and the federal government.

“How do you develop the oversight and transparency?” Gehl asked.

Georgia’s answer to that is the Recovery Act Implementation Team, a very no-nonsense name for a group of representatives from the planning and budget office, as well as the state’s 31 agencies, charged with making sure federal stimulus money is spent in the right places. The bucks stop here.

At the top is Celeste Osborn, Georgia’s deputy financial officer, who was appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue the day after President Barack Obama signed off on the stimulus bill.

The group has been meeting weekly since the end of February. Though the federal government has not told the states in detail how the stimulus dollars should be reported, Osborn has asked each agency to come up with their own documents and any potential reporting problems that may trip them up along the way.

Stimulus money has its own federal account number to distinguish it from other federal grant money. That information is zapped to a data warehouse and then sent to Washington.

“This certainly is one of the most transparent funding schemes that I’ve ever seen,” State Auditor Russell Hinton said. “There are so many requirements attached to this act in terms of reporting the information.”

For some, however, it’s not enough.

Watson at Common Cause and other watchdog groups have formed the Georgia Stimulus Transparency and Accountability Coalition. The group is pushing for the state agencies to give a little more information on the process for choosing which projects receive stimulus money, among other things.

“We’re concerned about random selection,” Watson said. “If we can provide some oversight, we think it’s going to be a better process, a little less political, a little more objective, a little more structured.”

Watson points to other state’s stimulus Web sites as examples. North Carolina goes as far as to list its projects on an interactive map.

“I’m not sure there’s a lot of answers right now, but there’s a lot of questions,” she said.

A detailed Georgia Web site will be up by the end of June, according to governor’s office spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

About one-third, or $2.83 billion, of federal stimulus money available to Georgia had been awarded the state as of May 1, according to the governor’s office. It has been designated mostly to Medicaid, transportation and education projects.

Georgia is one of 16 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that the Government Accountability Office will track over the next few years to see how money is spent. The agency chose Georgia and the other locations because, all were told, they hold two-thirds of the nation’s people and will receive two-thirds of the stimulus money.

Hinton said one of his concerns is managing expectations for how the well Recovery Act Implementation Team performs. Not every state has the same accounting systems adequate to track data such as how federal stimulus money is going to be spent.

He said it will take time before such systems are perfected and that process may change several times.

“I’m hoping we get it right soon enough so that the public is not disappointed with it,” he said.