National Reporting Project:

Watchdog the Stimulus

Covering the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act
About that $787 billion…

 Components of the Stimulus:

 Tax credits: $288 billion
 Entitlements: $224 billion
 Grants, contracts, loans: $275 billion
 We’re focusing on the bottom two
 Total spending: $499 billion
Where has the money gone so far?
 $16 billion in federal contracts
 data already released
 $280 billion going to state and
local governments
 data available tomorrow
 Who can determine if this
money is spent wisely?
Stimulus money funds projects in
your communities
 Only local papers can
cover these projects
 They know their
communities
 They know the
priorities
 This is community
journalism at its finest
APME, AP & Sunlight will help
 AP will provide Recovery
data and its expertise
 Sunlight Foundation can do
a Newstrain, Webinars
 APME will collect the
stimulus stories so you can
 Follow stories your colleagues
have published
 Get ideas from your peers
 Have stories you’ve published
shared with others
 Give your peers ideas
Types of stories you can find
 Weatherization
program from
DOE
 $5 billion spent
overall
 Local program
got $132 million
 Who got half the
money?
 Politically active
builders group
Looking at who benefits
 What they found:
 Program 11 times
larger than normal
 Half goes to Indiana
Builders Assn
 IBA a big donor to
Gov. Mitch Daniels
 Daniels decided who
gets Recovery funds
What projects are approved
 A bridge in Town of
Arena, Wis.
 10 cars a day use it
 Spending $426,000
to replace it
 All paid with
stimulus dollars
Who’s getting contracts?
How many jobs were created or saved?

 Major purpose
of stimulus
 Hard to count
a saved job
 Can we really
trust these
numbers?
 Who will check
them?
 We’ve only just begun to cover this…

 Low traffic border crossings get upgrades

worth $420 million…
…but have already found problems

 $272 million in stimulus grants from FAA

to low priority projects
 Getting started isn’t hard

 You begin with the best federal data on local spending

ever available from Recovery.gov
Some very detailed descriptions
AP cleans it up
 Data from AP comes ready
to use
 AP makes it available to
member papers quickly
 So you can find local information

 Find all the bridges getting stimulus funds in your readership area
And explore it
 Interactive
map from AP
 See jobs
created…
 By state
 By industry
 By county
But what can you do with the data?
 Drill down to recipients…

 Joint venture of Jacobs Engineering & Stantec

 Awarded a $220,535 contract
 Precisely 0.63 jobs created or saved
 Background Jacobs Engineering
 PACER search
for the company
 Turns up lots of
court cases
 Let’s take a look
at one…
Multi-million dollar lawsuit

 Class action suit

 Workers sue for:
 Unpaid overtime
 Unpaid wages
 Other violations
 Proposed $4.25
million settlement
 Still pending
Are they politically active?
 OpenSecrets.org
tells us:
 They have a PAC
 Top contributor to
38 members
 They’ve hired
lobbyists
 Jacobs Engineering’s PAC…
 See who they give
to using
 OpenSecrets.org
 FEC.gov
 Appropriators
among recipients:
 Sen. Kit Bond
 Rep. Jo Ann
Emerson
 Their federal lobbying…

 Data available from Senate & House and OpenSecrets.org

 Jacobs spent $180K while ARRA was being considered
 PAC gives to state & local pols
 Sources:
 State ethics committee
sites
 Nat’l Inst. on Money in
State Politics
 Gives to St. Louis Mayor
Francis Slay
 Gives to lots of state
races around country
Do a lot of this legwork online
 Lots of disclosure
on the Web
 Government
sources available
 Nonpartisan
nonprofits too
 Most information
free
 Sunlight puts data on your iPhone

 App that lets you see stimulus recipients

But only your papers can tell us…
 Is the stimulus
working?
 Is it well
managed?
 Is it helping?
 What’s
working?
 What’s not?
When you get back to the newsroom…

 …you’ll have this data

available
 …you’ll know what to
start looking for
 Webinars will be
coming Nov. 5
 Stay tuned to APME