Stimulus watchdog: job counters confused, need guidance

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Some people receiving federal stimulus dollars are confused about how to calculate jobs created or saved with the money and need more guidance, says the federal government’s top watchdog for the program.

Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, added there is some inaccurate information on recovery.gov, where the stimulus spending and jobs information is being posted, though he did not elaborate.

“Clearly, recipients are not getting it,” said Devaney, whose board maintains recovery.gov. “So I think there needs to be some clarity to that, and I am pretty sure there will be.”

Devaney, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, made his comments Thursday in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution amid news reports that say some organizations have grossly overstated how many jobs have been created or saved with the money. Among them are a community college and a nonprofit organization in South Georgia.

The White House announced last week that about 640,000 jobs had been created or saved so far through the stimulus program. Of those jobs, 24,681 are in Georgia. Critics have repeatedly questioned how those numbers are calculated and how many of the jobs were newly created.

Federal officials say they have not kept track of how many of the jobs are new. Meanwhile, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget has been advising recipients of the money to calculate them as "full-time equivalents" by taking the cumulative number of hours worked in jobs created or retained through stimulus projects and dividing that by the hours in a full-time schedule.

“I am going to suggest to you that it is time for all of us, ourselves included, to look at: ‘Is it working?’ and ‘Could some improvement be made?’” Devaney said of the federal guidance. “And, of course, always there could be improvements made.”

Devaney said one possible solution is to create a system that would prevent recipients from reporting a high number of jobs stemming from a small stimulus contract. “The trick is where is the balance and how do we guess what the right cutoff is?” he said.

An OMB spokesman did not respond to requests for comment by press time Thursday.

The Associated Press exposed Wednesday how the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council in Moultrie reported that stimulus spending has saved 935 of its jobs, though only 508 people work there. Public records show the council reported receiving $187,440 in federal stimulus funds partly to fund pay raises and college scholarships for staff. The council issued a statement on its Web site Thursday, blaming the error on a misplaced decimal point. The number of jobs reported should have been 9.35, not 935, the statement says.

Last month, the AP exposed how recovery.gov said 280 jobs were created or saved through $199,998 in federal stimulus spending on three semitrucks and trailers and a modular classroom and bathroom for the East Central Technical College campuses in Fitzgerald and Douglas, Ga. But 280 actually represents the number of students who would be trained with the trucks and modular building, said Mike Light, a spokesman for the Technical College System of Georgia. He called the error an “honest mistake.”

The White House has responded to the errors, saying they represent only a small percentage of the total number of jobs reported on recovery.gov and that they would probably be balanced out by other errors that underreported jobs elsewhere.