BY SARAH ROSS

SALEM- Governor Ted Kulongoski announced Tuesday that the State was able to fund 5,800 jobs this quarter with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the stimulus.

The funding for these jobs came in as $150 million over the past three months. Tuesday’s press release also mentioned that the State also used this money for equipment and materials.

“This report demonstrates that the Recovery Act continues to help support jobs across the state for thousands of Oregonians during this difficult economic period,” said Gov. Kulongoski.

The press release stated that over the past three months, stimulus funds paid salaries for over 4,000 educators in Oregon’s K-12 schools and universities and 736 State correctional facility employees.

Oregon received about $613 million in total from the stimulus for this quarter, including funds for health care, education, and unemployment assistance. Around $1.7 million has been given directly to Oregonians since February. This came in the way of unemployment payments, Medicaid assistance, and food stamps assistance.

“Democrat policies in Salem and Washington have failed to create the private sector jobs we need for Oregon’s economic recovery,” responded House Minority Leader, Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg. “While creating few jobs for Oregon families, both of the Democrats’ state and federal stimulus packages have contributed to runaway government spending that will be impossible to sustain in future biennia.”

BY JACOB SZETO

The White House recently claimed that about 640,000 jobs have been saved or created as a result of the $787 billion stimulus package. Many have questioned the accuracy of this number, and for good reason.

Faulty reporting appears to be pervasive in the data used to make the claim. Jim Scarantino, of NewMexico.Watchdog.org, first broke the story that the transparency site for the stimulus package (Recovery.gov) was reporting congressional districts that did not exist in his home state. These phantom congressional districts were prominently displayed in the state summary of districts that had saved or created the most jobs.

Oregon Politico’s investigation showed that Recovery.gov reported Oregon to have nine phantom congressional districts. These Oregon phantom districts created or saved 15 jobs, at a cost to taxpayers of almost $5 million.

A quick look at reported jobs created in Oregon by the $787 billion stimulus package turned up more inaccuracies. $397,761 spent to save 205 jobs at the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency was actually spent to give pay raises to staff. 200 jobs supposedly created by a taxiway construction project for the Coos County Airport District was really only 20 jobs.

BY JACOB SZETO

According to Recovery.gov, the U.S. government’s official website for data related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Oregon has a total of nine new congressional districts. That’s eight more than Oregon is projected to have after the 2010 census.

These nine phantom Congressional districts include: 00, 14^th, 8^th, 16^th, 60^th, 21^st, 6^th, 36^th and 39^th.

The national stimulus has awarded Oregon $1,853,303,183, which, according to the government has saved or created 9,653 jobs for Oregonians. These phantom districts have managed to create or save 15 jobs seemingly out of thin air. All it will cost taxpayers is $4.9 million dollars, or $326,624 per job. The 60^th Congressional district actually created zero jobs with $206,710 of stimulus funds.

Oregon is not alone with these phantom districts. Bill McMorris of Watchdog.org reports that a total of $6.4 billion has gone to 440 phantom districts across the nation.

According to reporter Michael Noyes of the Montana Policy Institute, Ed Pound, the director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said there are no plans to correct these errors until the next reporting cycle.

“People make errors, and we’ve found people are making errors in these reports,” said Ed Pound. “Our job is data integrity, not data quality.”