Gov't Website Shows Stimulus $ Sent To Places That Don't Exist

The government website tasked with transparent reporting of millions in federal stimulus dollars is making some mistakes. 

Tuesday, November 17th, if you logged on to recovery.gov, and started to track where stimulus funds were spent, you'd notice money going to congressional districts that don't exist. 

The website lists millions of dollars spent in New York's 00 congressional district. 

It shows 44 jobs created in New York's 71st congressional district

It also lists the 38th, 45th, and 51st congressional district in New York State, where jobs were created and millions of stimulus dollars spent.  The problem is, New York only has 29 congressional districts.  Eleven of the districts where funds went, don't exist. 

It happened in more than one state and many times over. 

"Only in the federal government will you spend almost $10 million dollars on a website that ultimately doesn't even have accurate information," said Rep. Chris Lee, representing New York's very real 26th district. 

So we called the federal government to find out what happened. 

Turns out, it is a mistake, a typo.

"We never expected this reporting process to go without a glitch," said Cheryl Arvidson, Assistant Communications Director for the Recovery Board.   

She explained recovery.gov gets it's information from reports filled out by the companies and organizations that received the money.  On the forms those organizations filled out, they either wrote the wrong congressional district, misunderstood, or left the district blank.   

And that's what made it online.  

There is a fact checker, scrutinizing the reports; however, congressional district was not one of the numbers that was double checked. 

Officials admit the numbers on the congressional districts are wrong, but insist that's all.

"That does not mean the money that was sent out from the various agencies handling recovery funds went to some black hole of some sort.  That money is still accounted for on the website," Arvidson said.

Now if you log on to the website, instead of showing the money allocated to the wrong congressional district, the district number is simply not reported and listed as "unassigned". 

Click here to see the correction