Stimulus Watch: See What's Proposed by State

From Stimulus Watch, here's a list of proposed projects by state to potentially be funded by the stimulus package.

From the Stimulus Watch website:

The Obama White House has begun taking the first steps to keep its promise to be the most transparent and accountable administration in history. However, it has yet to provide the type of interactive accountability tool you see here. Because legislative and executive activity on stimulus spending is moving so quickly, we feel its important to help jump-start citizen participation as soon as possible.

Additionally, this site is interactive in a way we don't expect to see in federal government sites. First, we are trying to gather knowledge from you about the worthiness of local projects before they are funded. Second, after a project has been funded we would like to continue to harness local knowledge about how the funds were spent and the project managed in order to keep local officials accountable. To date, no federal site does this.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed by the President on February 17. That legislation won't list the projects to be funded. Instead, it will appropriate money for federal grant programs, such as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) or Surface Transportation Program, which will then use the appropriated stimulus money to make grants to cities. In the case of CDBG, for example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development will be the agency that will decide (using a formula) which of the projects requested by the mayors will be funded.

That said, the funding Congress approves for these programs, and thus how much money cities will actually receive for their projects, may exceed or fall short of the mayors' suggestions. This means that not every project requested by the mayors will be funded. And that is why it's important for citizens to register their opinions on which projects they believe are critical and which are not. By the same token, it is also likely that many projects not yet proposed by localities (and thus not listed on this site) will receive funding via federal programs.

HT: Roger Meiners