Errors riddle accounts of stimulus spending: "Nine months after President Obama promised that his $789 billion stimulus package would be the most transparent spending bill in history, much of the information available to the public for the Bay Area and the rest of the nation is incomplete or inaccurate."
The White House's Recovery Act Web site - www.recovery.gov - shows that $660 million has been awarded to Bay Area transportation projects to create 997 jobs, which amounts to a staggering $661,986 per job.
Last week, the site showed that California Congressional Districts 00 and 99 received millions of dollars in stimulus funding even though neither district exists.
The Bay Area's total also included $1.8 million to purchase buses in Duluth, Minn., which the federal Web site pinpointed with a dot just below San Leandro, and $4.8 million for road work in Laredo - which is in Texas.
Glitches in reporting
The White House said the mistakes are simply reporting glitches and do not reflect widespread accounting problems or take away from the overall success of the stimulus plan, which they assert has already created more than 1 million jobs nationwide.
"The jobs and related projects listed are legitimate - they were just coded in the wrong congressional district," White House spokeswoman Liz Oxhorn said.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/11/23/MN2A1ANSVT.DTL#ixzz0XgiKSeLH
