More than Six Billion Dollars going to Phantom Districts Nationwide
by Lynn Walsh on Mar.21, 2010, under Investigations, What's New
A story written for Ohio Watchdog:
More than Six Billion Dollars going to Phantom Districts Nationwide
Posted by Lynn Walsh on November 17, 2009The federal stimulus package has created or saved just under 30,000 jobs in 440 congressional districts that do not exist. According to watchdog.org that would double the size of the House of Representatives.
All of the information can be found on www.recovery.gov, a website that operates on an $84 million budget. New Mexico Watchdog broke the story yesterday after noticing money had been distributed to ten congressional districts the state does not have. Ohio, New Hampshire, Kansas, Minnesota, West Virginia, and Michigan have released similar stories of inaccurate reporting by the website.
Ed Pound, Director of Communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, told a reporter from the Montana Policy Institute, “people make errors, and we’ve found people are making errors in these reports.” Pound said, “Our job is data integrity, not data quality.” The recovery Accountability and Transparency Board is responsible for overseeing www.recovery.gov.
