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Curious About Stimulus Progress?

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By BILLY HOUSE

bhouse@tampatrib.com

Published: March 7, 2009

WASHINGTON - Maybe it's curiosity. Or worry. Or both.

A Web site launched by the White House last month to allow citizens to keep track of where stimulus dollars are going is getting 3,000 hits per second and already has registered more than 150 million hits altogether.

"Amazing" is how Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman described that news from Robert Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, at a hearing Thursday.

Lieberman said Thursday that the high interest in the Recovery.gov Web site shows the American people want to understand where the money from the $787 billion stimulus bill is going and how much people "want us to make sure the money is spent efficiently and well."

Lieberman said he presumes such interest "reflects both the anxiety and urgency with which the American people want to see us doing something to get the economy going again."

Others aren't so impressed with what users are finding in return for all that clicking on to Recovery.gov.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group, concedes it's been only a couple of weeks since the site was launched on Feb. 17, hours before President Barack Obama signed the stimulus measure into law.

"I know things can evolve," Ellis said. "But it's not that easy to get a grasp on where the money is going so far."

For instance, there is no quick way to determine funding amounts headed to Florida and its communities for specific uses or programs, or even aggregated amounts for the state and municipalities.

Instead, users must sift through a growing list of White House news releases piled onto the Web site's home page that have announced different types of funding as the money has been allocated.

Then, the user is typically required to exit the Recovery.gov page through a link via the news release to the site of the pertinent federal agency, and from there locate spreadsheets, maps or other lists that may provide state and local numbers.

One example: Obama on Friday announced $2 billion in stimulus money for state and local law enforcement assistance.

But to learn Florida gets about $135 million of that money - or that Hillsborough County receives $2 million and Tampa gets $1.7 million - the user is required to follow a link contained on the site's news release to the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance's "Recovery Act" Web site.

Once there, the user can click on Florida on a national map, and get a spreadsheet that breaks down the funding by county and municipality.

It's not always that easy.

On Feb. 25, the Obama administration announced that the Department of Housing and Urban Development had allocated $10.1 billion. A link on the news release takes users to another news release on HUD's Web site.

From there, another link on that news release takes the user to HUD's special "Recovery Web site." On that page, there are yet further links to pages detailing eight different funding categories ranging from homelessness prevention to Native American Block Grants.

To get local funding numbers, however, the user then must click yet more links located on the individual category pages.

"It seems everything is there. But you have to go to a lot of different places to actually find all the information," Ellis said.

A White House spokesman said Friday that state details will become easier to access because many states are launching their own Recovery Act Web pages. Those pages are expected to aggregate and explain how money received is being spent.

Some of those sites, such as one for North Carolina - www.ncrecovery.gov - are up and running and are providing updates. They can be accessed through the Recovery.gov Web site under a heading that asks: "Curious about the recovery progress in your state? Learn more about state recovery efforts here."

Florida has not yet launched such a site, but one is expected soon, said Erin Isaac, a spokesman for Gov. Charlie Crist.

Reporter Billy House can be reached at (202) 662-7673.

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