Don't count on stimulus job tally - JSOnline

Don't count on stimulus job tally - JSOnline: "A stimulus job report that says more than 10,000 jobs were saved or created in Wisconsin is rife with errors, double counting and inflated numbers based more on satisfying federal formulas than creating real jobs, a Journal Sentinel review has found.

In one case, five jobs were mistakenly listed as 50 - and then counted twice. In another, pay raises to workers were listed as saving more than 100 jobs. And in another, jobs were listed as saved even though the money had not been received and no work on the project had begun.

The problems mirror those surfacing around the country, as the federal numbers claiming 640,000 jobs created or saved by stimulus money are being scrutinized.

Among the Journal Sentinel's findings:

Double-counted jobs: About $7.3 million of federal money will flow to the Parkland Sanitary District in Douglas County to replace its sewer system, a project listed as creating or saving 100 jobs even though work won't start until this spring, federal recovery data shows.

But that number is inflated by 95 jobs, Parkland Sanitary District treasurer Eric Shaffer admitted.

When reporting to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's online reporting system, Schaffer meant to type '5' but mistakenly added a zero - and that 50-job figure appears twice in the federal data because it was a combined grant and loan. He tried to correct the error, but was told it was too late for the federal reporting deadline.

'We are volunteers, and we made a mistake,' Shaffer said. 'It was a simple typographical error, and we tried to fix it. Now that we understand the system, it will be much easier.'

Meanwhile, three other Wisconsin towns reported jobs on combined federal loans and grants that were counted twice, doubling their totals from 35 to 70 jobs, records show.

Any erroneous job figures won't be corrected until January, said Ed Pound, communications director at the federal Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the oversight panel for stimulus money.

'Recipients are going to make mistakes, and we've had a fair number of those,' Pound said. 'But we said from the very beginning, there were going to be errors because this is the first time people have done this. It's just not surprising.'"