By now, news stories related to the difficulty in tracking expenditures related to the “stimulus” spending package, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and estimating jobs “created,” “retained,” or simply “funded” by the bill are legion, legendary; old news, in fact.  President Obama swore that his administration would track “every dime” of the $862 billion spending bill.  The federal government dedicated an $18 million website, www.recovery.gov., to the task of chasing down the dollars.

While Vice President Joe Biden has heralded the website’s “unprecedented transparency,” it has been plagued with glitches and inaccuracies since its inception in October, 2009.  The Government Accountability Office generates reports almost weekly trying to track the funds, and pointing out, like Cassandra, the inherent flaws in the way the agencies are tracking, or not tracking the dollars.

A March 2010 Commerce Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) Report on contracts and grants workforce staffing and qualifications adds to the concerns about oversight not only of ARRA-funded projects, but also about oversight of non-ARRA contracts and grants that federal agencies administer under normal budget conditions.  According to usaspending.gov, the federal government spent $1.2 trillion on all grants and contracts in fiscal year 2009.  The ARRA, which bloated some agency budgets to hundreds of times their normal levels and accelerated spending deadlines to stay with a period of 18 months to three years, put the grants and contract process on speed and steroids, leaving federal watchdogs out of breath and struggling to keep up.

At the behest of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the OIG was tasked to survey 29 federal agencies to find whether they believed they had adequate staffing to administer the $275 billion in ARRA grants, loans, and contracts.  The Commerce OIG wasn’t able to independently verify the results of the questionnaire, so “answers to the survey depended on the respondent’s honesty and ability to respond.”  Even under these circumscribed parameters, what the report found is alarming.    

Agencies were given three ways to describe their current staffing for oversight of ARRA funds: adequate; adequate, but with impact on non-Recovery work, or inadequate.  Large agencies, such as the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Interior, reported that their staffing was inadequate at a higher rate than the smaller agencies.  The lapses in oversight over non-ARRA awards included delays in awarding grants and contracts, paying the staff overtime, bringing on supplemental staff, and decreased oversight of the grants after they were awarded.

Of the large agencies that responded, 41 percent reported that staffing was inadequate and 45 percent reported staffing adequate, but with impact on non-Recovery Act work.  Among smaller agencies, only 24 percent responded that staffing levels were adequate.

The report stated that “…to meet the increased work load, agencies are devoting more full-time equivalents (FTE) to Recovery Act contracts and grants.  Such personnel are projected to increase by over 125 percent from the summer of 2009 to the summer of 2010, growing from approximately 1,800 to more than 4,100.”  Agencies which received ARRA funding reported that in a two-month period, from April to June, 2009, they assigned 22,000 staffers (out of a total of 99,000), the vast majority of whom are grant program managers, to deal with ARRA funding requirements.  They expect to add even more through the end of June, 2010. 

The report also revealed that “[t]he grants workforce has no government-wide qualification or training requirements, although some agency-specific requirements exist.  Most employees work for agencies that do not have structured competency-based requirements for developing their grants workforce.  Only about 8 percent of the grants officers, 50 percent of the grants program managers, and 29 percent of the grants specialists work in agencies that will have implemented agency-specific training and continuous learning requirements by June, 2010.”

The ARRA is putting enormous strains on agency personnel trying to oversee hundreds of billions of collars in taxpayer-funded grants and contracts.  In fact, respondents to the survey expressed concern about the high costs associated with following the ARRA money.  One respondent described the diminished oversight of non-ARRA awards as “‘reactionary’ contract administration.”

The so-called “stimulus” package has been a nightmare for taxpayers.  The administration has failed to track the dollars, there are no verifiable numbers on jobs created or funded (the Vice President’s rhetoric notwithstanding), and agencies have funded thousands of wasteful and ineffective projects.  The OIG report reveals that not only is it nearly impossible to track the ARRA spending down to the very last dime, accelerated stimulus spending also has, and will continue to have, a negative impact on the federal government’s ability to monitor hundreds of billions of dollars in other, non-ARRA grants and contracts.