AJC: Number of stimulus jobs in Ga. overstated

ATLANTA - An analysis suggests recipients of federal stimulus dollars have overstated the number of jobs created or saved in Georgia.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution analyzed several public records and concluded the jobs saved may have been overestimated by more than 1,500.

For example, several organizations that offer Head Start preschool programs and other services in Georgia reported retaining hundreds of jobs based on raises they gave their employees. In one such case, the Central Savannah River Area Economic Opportunity Authority in Augusta reported saving 317 jobs.

But fiscal officer Chris Whitley says that represents the number of Head Start workers who received 2.3 percent raises from the stimulus funds.

"I called Washington. And I talked to a young man up there and he seemed as confused as I was," Whitley said, "but he was at the help desk. ... He said, 'I would put the number of people who got the raise.' And that is what I did."

Like Whitley, many public agencies and private businesses say they found federal guidelines for calculating jobs that have been created or retained using stimulus money to be confusing and hard to follow.

Some who overstated jobs created their own formulas or listed jobs they expect to create but haven't yet. Others said they simply got it wrong.

Those include an Augusta agency reported creating 68 jobs even though the work has not started yet and a Head Start organization in LaGrange that reported 77 jobs based on raises it gave its employees with the money.

The Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, reports on its Web site that 24,681 jobs have been created or saved so far in Georgia, and 640,329 nationwide.

But an AJC examination of records posted on the Web site calls into question the accuracy of the numbers.

The AJC found the errors after downloading records from recovery.gov, examining those that reported the most jobs, and contacting recipients of the federal funds to verify their job numbers.

Federal agencies that award stimulus funds are required to review what recipients self-report before their information is posted, said Ed Pound, a spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which operates the Web site.

Officials acknowledge that they don't believe all of the job information is complete and correct. But they said they released it to the public to make the spending as transparent as possible. They have asked the public to point out any errors and help police the spending.

"Changes are certain to include both upward and downward revisions, but we expect that the net effect on the totals will be modest," said Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery office.