The $6.35 billion in federal stimulus money that is flowing into Georgia may require the establishment of a state office to make sure the dollars wind up where they're supposed to, state officials say.
Gov. Sonny Perdue is pondering a new state authority to track federal Recovery Act money, a governor's spokesman said, even though the state already has had four agencies working on a monitoring program since February.
Members of those agencies —- the state auditor, inspector general, accounting and planning and budget —- will meet with Perdue over the next few weeks to further explore the idea, spokesman Chris Schrimpf said.
The need for a new oversight office was underscored in a federal audit, released last week, which determined that Georgia's resources for tracking stimulus money "continue to be limited." The audit reported that both the state auditor and inspector general want to hire more people to keep track of the federal funds.
The state auditor's office, which has assigned 140 people to audit stimulus money through fiscal 2011, said it will need incremental staff additions in coming years.
According to the report, released by the Government Accounting Office, state auditor Russell Hinton will need seven more workers to help with audits for fiscal 2009, 16 more for fiscal 2010 and 10 more for fiscal 2011.
Two of the four workers in the state inspector general's office have some oversight of stimulus funds, the report said, but inspector general Elizabeth Archer wants to hire five more people.
In addition to making sure agencies are complying with Recovery Act guidelines and reviewing how funds are being spent, the inspector general's office would review contracts tied to stimulus money and investigate allegations that money was being misspent, the report said.
How the state would fund the new stimulus tracking office is unclear. The federal Office of Management and Budget has guidelines on how stimulus money can be spent for administrative purposes and a bill is pending in Congress on how to track stimulus money, Schrimpf said.
The state has opened a Recovery Act Web site with a searchable database for the money each agency has received or expects to receive. Consumer advocates say that, combined with other efforts, is a strong step in the right direction. But they want more.
"We have much work ahead to gain a level of confidence that all of the i's have been dotted and the t's crossed," said Angela Speir Phelps, deputy director of Georgia Watch, one of the groups that created the Georgia Stimulus Transparency and Accountability Coalition.
The state has started using an automated system to track jobs created or saved because of stimulus money, according to the federal audit, which is the second such report released since funds were first disbursed.
The Web-based system is a data warehouse that state agencies have already been using to report on other federal money they have been allocated, said state accounting officer Greg Griffin. Using that system as a model, the state re-created another one for federal stimulus money.
Griffin declined to provide a figure for the number of jobs that have been created with stimulus dollars, stating that not every agency has begun using the data warehouse.
Georgia is one of 16 states, along with the District of Columbia, that the GAO will follow over the next few years to track how federal stimulus dollars are spent. These states account for two-thirds of the nation's population and will receive two-thirds of the stimulus money.
About the Author
The Latest
Featured
