Targeting Recovery Act Funding

[1]As we continue to go over [2] the recipient data the Recovery Board released late Friday [3], another article [4] by the AP today shed an interesting light on another factor in Recovery Act spending. While many commentators are focusing on how fast the money is being spent, or how many jobs are being created per Recovery Act dollar (a particularly inane exercise), it's important that we figure out where that money is going, and that it's going to those who need it most. As the article reminds us, the stimulus is supposed to target "economically distressed" communities, but it can be difficult to actually deliver money to these communities.

The AP article gives an example of this problem. Lamar, Missouri, has a relatively high unemployment rate (12%), and its residents would easily be considered an economically distressed community. Indeed, the city has a large, multi-million dollar contract for road construction, which should bring many jobs to the area. The only problem is that, according to the article, the contractor on the project brought in workers from outside the city, meaning that while Lamar is benefiting from better roads, its unemployment level stayed the same.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that jobs are being created. But the article is another reminder that targeting the stimulus money is very difficult. And it's another reason why we need performance and equity data with the recipient reports.

Image by Flickr user wools [5] used under a Creative Commons license.