After Deadline: Watchdogging the stimulus spending

We’re preparing a database and some stories to help you track how the federal government is spending its nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.

We’ve identified at least $181 million in grants delivered to cities, counties, nonprofits and school districts by Oct. 1 between Escalon in the north and Merced in the south. That’s a welcome injection of cash for local governments who say they’d be scrapping road projects and laying off police officers without the federal money.

We obtained our data from Recovery.gov, which is a pretty remarkable site in terms of government transparency. It’s all there.

That said, there are a number of errors in some of the reporting at the site. Republicans have been making hay over “phantom” congressional districts in the data. Rep. George Radanovich this week identified $5.7 million in stimulus aid to congressional districts that don’t exist.

Those phantom districts are easy targets, but they essentially reflect that someone filling out a form to report a contract or grant didn’t know the number of his or congressional district. It’s not much of a surprise that a mistake like that would happen.

One frustrating aspect of the data available at Recovery.gov is its vagueness. Very few school districts provide a description of how they’re using stimulus money. Two road paving projects in Atwater for some reason were identified as “Hollywood Pop Sacramento.”

But I don’t want to nitpick. The important thing is that you can find out who’s getting money and how much at Recovery.gov. We’ll fill in some of the gaps Monday and in the weeks ahead.

- AA