Follow the stimulus money .The White House called it the accountability summit Thursday. State leaders charged with spending the stimulus were told they are on the “front lines”. Officials from all fifty states but Idaho attended to be coached on how to make the stimulus work .Cabinet secretaries and administration officials were available for questioning. Accountability and transparency were buzz words at the meeting a major part of transparency is easy availability of information.”Recovery” web pages and easy access to state information regarding stimulus money spending and contracting is key. Stimulus spending has started here in Vermont at the Richmond Bridge. The choice of the very low bidding out of state company makes clear the need for openness. Vt. Secretary of Transportation defended the Maine contractor choice in the paper the other day as questions were raised about the company being from out of state and about the huge difference in bid costs .Nothing apparently is amiss but information access online could be better because accountability is the goal.
A tracker tracker,here is a link http://www.obamaperspective.com/?p=559
to a site by a fellow who is tracking all fifty state’s “recovery” websites. He is tracking how states are handling transparency issues. Posted are links to and brief notes on all states "recovery” homepages. The quality of Vermont’s site (as it now appears) compared to others according to this site gets what would translate as a “meh”.
…..Vermont’s stimulus site includes only the most general information about the recovery plan, such as links to the text of the bill, and to the federal stimulus site,http://recovery.vermont.gov/
More information will follow, a press release says.
The tracking website says “we’re considering adding a scoring system. The Missouri site is noted as best …and for accountability and décor Missouri nails a 9.8! . The Missouri Accountability portal provides comprehensive documentation of grants, contracts, budgets and state employee salaries. All line item expenditures are accounted for, even for minimal expenses. Missouri’s recovery site lists stimulus funds received by the state, with fields for the date of deposit, the funds’ intended purpose, the amount and how the dollars have been spent. http://mapyourtaxes.mo.gov/MAP/Portal/ Missouri is the "Show Me State "
http://www.propublica.org/special/chart-tracking-states-spending-trackers
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment