From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Watchdog Report: Update on Uses and Accountability of
Recovery Act Funding

Audio interview by GAO staff with Chris Mihm, Managing Director,
Strategic Issues

Associated Report Number: GAO-10-999, Recovery Act: Opportunities to
Improve Management and Strengthen Accountability over States’ and
Localities’ Uses of Funds

Released on: September 20, 2010


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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's September
20, 2010. GAO has released its latest report on the use, oversight, and
impact of Recovery Act funding. A group led by Chris Mihm, managing
director in GAO's strategic issues team, conducted this review. GAO's
Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Chris to learn more.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What is the status of the use of Recovery Act
funding at this point?

[ Chris Mihm: ] The story thus far for this month's bimonthly review,
similar to what we've seen in the past, federal funds continue to go
out. As of the beginning of August, $146 billion of the $280 billion of
total funds that were going to be made available for states and
localities to use, have been sent out, 60 percent of that. About $93
billion has been paid out since the start of this fiscal year that began
October of last year. So the money continues to go out, fulfilling a
wide range of health, transportation, energy, education, and other vital
public needs.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] One program that this report looked at it is the
home weatherization assistance program. What sort of progress has been
made in this area?

[ Chris Mihm: ] Well as you know from the earlier reports, that we had
some concerns about the pace of the program there. There were some
initial delays because of some Davis-Bacon reviews that had to be done
and then states setting up the infrastructures to make sure that they
could effectively manage and oversee contracts. Recently the pace has
begun to pick up. We now see that as of June 30th, that's the most
recent data that Department of Energy officials have, about 166,000
homes have been weatherized. That's about 29 percent or so of the
570,000 that they had been planning. In the past reports we had made a
variety of recommendations to DOE about concerns with the weatherization
programs and whether or not the requirements were being met. We've been
pleased that DOE has generally agreed with those recommendations and has
begun to take steps to implement them. We'll be continuing to monitor
that.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What did GAO find in this latest report with respect
to estimates of job creation?

[ Chris Mihm: ] As you know we have a requirement, along with our sister
congressional agency, the Congressional Budget Office, to comment on the
jobs estimates in the recipient reports. Now those jobs estimates are
expressed as FTEs, full-time equivalents, and those are just the dollars
that are funded directly by Recovery Act money so it doesn't get into
the larger economic events or job creation effects of the Recovery Act.
As of August 24, 2010, recipients reported on about 200,000 different
awards and reported that about 750,000 jobs had been created or
retained, you know using that FTE formula that I mentioned, under the
Recovery Act. What we looked at is we looked at both a series of how
agencies are assuring themselves that the data coming in are accurate.
We also did some statistical analysis of the recipient reports
themselves, looking at the ability to link reports across quarters,
reporting errors and other errors. In all cases we've been finding that
over time, not surprisingly, as recipients get more comfortable with the
reporting process, the data have become more complete and apparently
more accurate.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Moving forward, what will GAO's analysis of the
Recovery Act look like?

[ Chris Mihm: ] Well our approach is evolving. Over the first year, year
and a half, the big story on the Recovery Act is how are the funds
getting out? Where are they in the pipeline? Now, as I mentioned, an
awful lot of that money is out there. It's being used by recipients and
so it's quite appropriate for our evaluation strategy to evolve, to
start looking deeper into programs and saying what are we actually
getting for our investment on this? That's obviously also where a lot of
the public interest is going and very importantly, of course, where the
congressional interest is going. We're seeing more and more committees
in the Congress that are asking questions for their particular program
areas, what are we getting for our investment on that? So what we're
going to be doing going forward is rather than looking at up to a dozen
programs, as we've been doing every couple of month thus far, is really
start drilling down and focus on a single program each time and the
recipient reports for that particular program. What are we getting for
our monies in terms of outcomes? What are recipients reporting in terms
of that program and what sort [background music] of controls does the
agency have in place to ensure that the data that they're getting from
recipients is accurate and complete?

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[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's Web site at gao.gov, and be
sure to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more
from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.