Its official. Recovery.gov is Recovery.con – 60 jobs “saved or created” in New York really saved is 1.5 jobs – in Indiana!

Democrat PorkulusPissed off yet? Another state chimes in with BS numbers of so called jobs “saved or created” from the Obama/Democrat porkulus bill. Ib Putnam County, New York, where the government claims to have “saved” 60 jobs with the purchase of five Paratransit vans with $319,000 in federal stimulus funds is yet again not so accurate. The Recovery.gov website claims so, but John Lynch, Putnam County’s Commissioner of Planning/Development and Public Transportation, said, “That number of 60 jobs is incorrect.” In fact, according to The Putnam County Courier, the number of jobs that should appear on the report is not 60, but just 1.54, and those one and a half jobs are actually in New Paris, Indiana! Whether by bureaucratic error, or deliberate maneuvering, the administration has inflated claims of job creation based on Putnam County stimulus spending. Other stimulus-funded projects in Putnam County are riddled with reporting errors and inaccuracies.

Recovery.gov reports that Putnam County has received $1,092,595 of stimulus money for projects, $319,000 of which was dedicated to purchasing five new Paratransit vans, manufactured by Turtletop Busses in Indiana. Lynch told the Courier that the inaccurate number of 60 jobs created by the purchase of vans “counted both the second and third fiscal quarters, when it was only supposed to count the third quarter.” Putnam County officials tried to correct the number before the third quarter report was issued, but were “frozen out of the system” according to Lynch.

The number 60 does not reflect the number of jobs saved only by Putnam county’s expenditure of $319,000; that expenditure would yield an average salary of $5,316 per year. Only when Putnam County’s order of five vehicles was combined with orders from municipalities around the country, which may or may not be using stimulus funds for their purchases, are the 60 jobs at the New Paris plant considered “saved.” It is unknown whether the 60 Turtle Top jobs have been counted several times in the overall report.

According to Lynch, Turtle Top Busses claims that Putnam’s expenditures on busses in the third quarter added up to “a few days, and that comes to 1.54 jobs.”

“These numbers are quite alarming,” State Senator Vincent Leibell said. “They do not seem to have any basis in fact… I’m afraid the only jobs being created are the beancounters added to the payroll in order to keep track of the numbers. It would appear that the beancounters aren’t doing a great job.” Leibell added: “This isn’t accounting, it’s smoke and mirrors.”

“The [reporting] process and the procedure is craziness,” Lynch said. “We went back to Recovery.gov to confirm the numbers, but received an e-mail from them at quarter to five on the last day of reporting, to confirm that it was 1.54, not 60 jobs.” Putnam’s response arrived too late and the already-inflated number of 60 was reported anyway. No correction was made, even after Putnam officials alerted Recovery.gov of the reporting problems.

“The latest report goes to the heart of the fact that the stimulus package did nothing for Main Street throughout the Hudson Valley, and especially Putnam County, where business owners can’t get lines to credit to expand and create jobs, and foreclosures continue to mount,” said Assemblyman Greg Ball. “It leaves a lot of working class people wondering, where did the money go?”


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November 29, 2009 · Filed Under Porkulus

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