Nonexistant W.Va. Zip Codes Receive Stimulus Funding
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With the quarterly American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) data slated to be released soon, the most recent data from recovery.gov still has flaws, including funding for West Virginia zip codes which do not exist.
$28 million in stimulus funding is listed as going to four unknown zip codes: 26661, 26551, 24913, and 2119. The recovery.gov website lists funding by zip code. West Virginia Watchdog compared these zip codes to W.Va. zip codes. The zip codes that didn’t match up were ran though the U.S. Postal Service‘s Zip Code Lookup.
Three other zip codes included in West Virginia’s data were actually Virginia zip codes: 24503, Lynchburg; 23601, Newport News; and 23505, Norfolk. Combined these three cities received $212,249.
These mistakes comes on the heels of a story we broke back in Nov. 2008:
With the U.S. Census ready to begin, Congressional redistricting is right around the corner. However, it seems the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has already added eight new Congressional districts in West Virginia.
Over a billion dollars has come to West Virginia thanks to the Recovery Act. $2,387,321 of that total is going towards eight fictional Congressional districts: the 54th, 9th, 4th, 6th, 12th, 13th, and 00.
At that time Ed Pound, director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, blamed the flawed data on reporting errors. Those receiving stimulus funding report back to recovery.gov on what the funding is being used for and how many jobs are created/saved as a result.
“People make errors, and we’ve found people are making errors in these reports,” Pound said. “Our job is data integrity, not data quality.”
The nonexistant zip codes, combined with the phantom congressional district errors, put into doubt the success of ARRA. The Reason Foundation‘s Anthony Randazzo says government data needs to be held to a higher standard or accuracy:
These “data errors” or “human errors” according to government keep piling up. And it is certainly understandable that people around the country could report false information. But shouldn’t the federal government and management of the Recovery.gov website be held accountable for verifying the information? Especially if the president is going to cite the data to try and gain political favor by using it to “prove” the stimulus has “worked.”
The next quarterly ARRA report will be posted to recovery.gov on Jan. 30, 2010. West Virginia Watchdog will be scrutinizing that data as soon as it comes out.
(Hat tip to Jim Scarantino at New Mexico Watchdog for inspiring the story)
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Posted under Capitalism, Earmarks, Economy, Featured, Federal Government, Finances, Fraud, Legislation, News, Regulatory Reform, Transparency, spending.
Tags: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, New Mexico, Reason Foundation, Reinvestment Act, United States, United States Postal Service, West Virginia
15 Comments For This Post So Far
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10:43 pm on January 4th, 2010
Doncha know (tongue in cheek) those are the zip codes for people who voted for BO in 2008.