HARTFORD, January 26, 2010—Connecticut is 3rd in the nation for making
vital information available about its share of the $787 billion
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), according to a report
released today.
This finding is in the report , Show Us the Stimulus (Again), released today by the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group (ConnPIRG) and produced by Good Jobs First, a non-profit research center based in Washington, DC. This report updates a similar study published last July.
“Connecticut
should feel proud that we are a leader when it comes to transparency of
stimulus spending in our state. By the time the stimulus is completed,
I hope we will be number one,” said Jenn Hatch, an Associate at
ConnPIRG.
The full text of the report as well as the appendix for Connecticut and other states can be found at www.goodjobsfirst.org/stimulusweb.cfm.
“Some
states are making great strides in fulfilling President Obama’s promise
that the Recovery Act would be carried out with an unprecedented level
of transparency and accountability,” said Good Jobs First executive
director Greg LeRoy. “Led by Maryland, which again receives the highest
score, these states’ ARRA websites do a good job in helping taxpayers
understand and evaluate the role of the Recovery Act in job creation
and state fiscal relief.”
The study examines the quality and
quantity of disclosure by official state websites on the many different
ways that more than $200 billion in ARRA funding is flowing through
state governments to communities, organizations and individuals. It
examines the availability of information on spending programs as well
as specific grants and contracts including data relating to jobs and
the geographic distribution of spending within states. Using seven main
criteria, each state was graded on a scale of 0 to 100. Connecticut
received a score of 80.
The states scoring highest for
transparency of stimulus funds in the new report are: Maryland (87),
Kentucky (85), Connecticut (80), Colorado (72) and Minnesota (72).
At
the other end, the five states with the least adequate information on
ARRA programs and specific projects, starting from the worst scoring,
are: North Dakota (5), District of Columbia (6), Missouri (10), Alaska
(13) and Vermont (13).
Here are highlights of specific findings:
•
Most states do a good job of providing information on the composition
of their ARRA spending, both in broad program categories (energy,
housing, transportation, etc.) and in narrower ones. Only the District
of Columbia provides no program allocation information at all.
•
Geographic breakdowns (by county or locality) are less common than
summaries of spending by program category. Connecticut is one of
twenty-seven states who provide geographic information, often with
interactive maps.
• Only three states—Kentucky, Maryland and
Wisconsin—provide side-by-side comparison of the geographic
distribution of spending with patterns of economic distress or need
within the state.
• Besides overall spending amounts, state
residents can see where individual ARRA projects such as the repaving
of a road or repair of a school building are taking place. More than
half the states (28) now have some kind of project mapping feature on
their ARRA site, including Connecticut.
• Connecticut is one of
four states to provide details about ARRA-funded grants and contracts
regarding their: description, dollar amount, recipient name, completion
status, and the full text of contracts or grant awards. Forty-one
states give details about at least one of these criterion.
•
Connecticut is one of only five states—including Kentucky,
Massachusetts, Mississippi and New Hampshire— that provide the full
texts of at least some ARRA contract awards.
• Ten states have no
information about actual job creation on their websites: Hawaii,
Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina,
North Dakota, South Carolina and the District of Columbia. By contrast,
16 states list jobs data on individual projects as well as totals by
program area and for the state as a whole.
• Though changes in
methodology make exact comparisons impossible, some states improved
greatly since the July rankings: Kentucky soared from 47th place to
2nd; Illinois jumped from 50th to 7th; Minnesota climbed from 34th to
4th and Utah rose from 50th to 24th place.
