Stimulus web computer glitch fuels skeptics

Saint Paul, Minn. -- It was a simple case of operator error, but glitches discovered this week on the federal government's stimulus money tracking web site gave skeptics plenty of ammo.

Second District Congressman John Kline, a Lakeville Republican, seized on the error with a press release that questioned the credibility of the Obama administration's recovery effort.

"Where are the jobs?" read the banner headline on Kline's Wednesday missive, "White House's answer? In fictitious districts."

One of many reports available on Recovery.gov appeared to show that millions of stimulus dollars had gone to 19 different congressional districts in Minnesota, including 11 that don't exist. Minnesota has only eight members of Congress, a fact which made the $600,000 spent in the 57th District quite curious.

The day before Kline and other stimulus critics jumped on the issue, the federal government's recovery watchdog agency had already offered a very simple and plausible explanation. Contractors and agencies had made data entry errors when they went online and submitted mandatory job creation reports.

No money had been lost or stolen. It was simply a matter of people selecting the wrong district number in a computer form drop-down menu. Once they sent that data to the government, the web site automatically generated the suspect report.

"In Minnesota, if a certain company was supposed to get the money they got the money," Ed Pound of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board told KARE, "They just listed the wrong Congressional District. It's really as simple as that."

He noted that if a people drill more deeply into the same aggregate data on Recovery.gov they would easily see the money was spent in the state, in actual districts.

Life of its Own

And yet two days later Twin Cities newspapers were still chasing the controversy. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune's headline asked the question, "Did Stimulus money go to phantom districts in Minnesota?"

Friday morning, during Governor Tim Pawlenty's weekly statewide radio show, Deputy Chief of Staff Brian McClung joked that he was running for congress in the 57th District. First Lady Mary Pawlenty, filling in for her husband on the live broadcast, quipped she would throw McClung's victory party.

Pound, speaking from his office in Washington, D.C., told KARE the recovery board is glad the errors were caught. And anyone that suspects fraud or waste is encouraged to contact the board.

Having said that, Pound asserted data input errors in the field by those learning a new system shouldn't undermine the public's faith in the accounting process at work with Recovery Act money.

"There's no mystery in terms of the money. The money didn't go into black holes," Pound remarked, "The money is in the state where it's assigned. It's a human error that was made here, in terms of the Congressional district."

Pure Politics

Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman was less charitable to those conservative think tanks and politicians who grabbed the glitch ball and ran with it.

"These people are scoring political points at the cost of real lives, real human beings lives and real opportunities to move our cities forward," the Democrat told KARE Friday afternoon.

Coleman at the time was on his way to Saint Paul's police academy, which will be training 28 new officers paid for by stimulus grants. Other city programs have benefited already as well, including environmental cleanups and summer youth jobs initiatives.

As of October 10th at least 14,000 jobs had been created or saved in Minnesota with stimulus money, including 11,852 reported by the Minnesota Office of Management and Budget. Separate filings by local agencies accounted for the rest.

At that point $1.6 billion in Recovery Act money had been received and spent by the state. The state expects to receive a total of $4.7 billion over the two-year course of the program, and individual taxpayers are in line to reap $4.6 in tax benefits.

"The goal here is never to solve problems," Coleman said of the stimulus skeptics, "It's simply to attack someone you disagree with. In this case President Obama is the subject of all that."

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