Recently Recovery.gov updated its data to include stimulus spending from the first quarter of 2010.

Hovering over Kansas on the U.S. map gives the quick stats summary shown at the right.

Some of the curious Recovery.gov Kansas stimulus spending projects that need more research:

• The Administration of Children and Families is spending $26,860 with Spay and Neuter Kansas to address “pet/animal overpopulation in low-income neighborhoods” in Wichita.
• The Kansas Corporation Commission reported 0.12 jobs “for continuing work on the marketing contract to promote Efficiency Kansas.”  Is this effort, and the web site EfficiencyKansas.com, connected to the $281,990 spent with Trozzolo Communications Group for “advertising”?
• Part of a $552,500 grant from the Department of Energy to Johnson County included $8563 to buy 250 wire mesh compost bins from C. E. Shepherd Company, $220 for “worm composter bins” from Hayneedle, Inc., and $1500 for “Professional services for 2-day composting train-the-trainer workshop” from the Johnson County Extension Master Gardeners’ Association, and $538 for 30 “compost thermometers for trainers.”  Also, $493 for “food, snacks and beverages for two-day composting training session for 27 volunteer instructors.”
• The Department of Energy awarded conditionally $2.4 million to the University of Kansas Center for Research in Lawrence to research a hot spring geothermal project in west-central Nevada.  How does this create long-term jobs in Kansas by drilling slimhole exploration wells in Nevada?
• The Department of Justice gave various grants to Johnson County and many cities (Gardner, Leawood, Lenexa, Merriam, Mission, Olathe, Overland Park, Prairie Village, Roeland Park, Shawnee).  In addition, Elsag North America LLC received $48,185 for a”mobile license plate reader, operations license and 3 year additional product warranty.”  There was no description about how this equipment was to be used.
• The Federal Highway Administration awarded a grant of $24,575 to the Kansas Department of Transportation to “plant wildflowers within KDOT R/W at the Lenexa: I-435/K-10 Interchange to provide beautification along I-435.”
• The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers contracted with Weed Free Lawns to spray “weeds that were in the rip rap rock to make a more presentable park” as part of “spraying the weeds on the face of the dam and outlet areas.”  This $5140 for 8 hours of work was spent presumable at Clinton Lake in Lawrence.

Q1 Data for Kansas.  At the Download Center, the “State Summaries” (last updated June 16, 2010) can be selected for the Report Type under Recipient Reported.

All 3077 records of Kansas stimulus spending through Q1 2010 can be downloaded into a single CSV or Excel file, which can be manipulated using Excel or Access or other software tools.

Data can be broken down into prime recipients (recipient_role = “P”), sub-prime recipients (recipient_role=”S”) and vendors for primes or subs, (“PV” and “SV” recipient_role).

Award types can be “G” (grant), “C” (contracts), or “L” (loans).

The 3077 Kansas Q1 stimulus records can be broken into these categories, as shown in Table 1:

Table 1.  Q1 Kansas Stimulus Records by Recipient Role and Award Type

Award Type	Records	Recipient Role
		Prime	Prime Vendor	Sub Recipient	Sub Vendor
Contract	324	189	-	135	-
Grant	2720	600	355	1405	360
Loan	33	28	5	-	-
TOTAL	3077	817	360	1540	360

The prime contractor, subcontractors and vendors for a single project are all assigned the same “award_key”.

The number of stimulus jobs is only associated with the prime contractor.  All 8824 jobs can be accounted for by studying only the 817 prime contracts.

Sometimes accounting for Kansas stimulus work is not so easy, since not all of the funds “awarded” to Kansas result in work in Kansas. The next two case studies show some problems with accounting for jobs by state.

Case Study 1: Elevator replacements at air traffic control centers.  The Federal Aviation Administration awarded a $1,594,907 project to replace elevators at three traffic control centers in Kansas City (Olathe, KS), New York and Memphis.

A Virginia company, Jacobs Project Management, was awarded the contract, but the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Olathe, KS received a “local_amount” of $920,575.

Recovery.gov says 4.34 jobs were retained and these jobs were assigned to Olathe for accounting purposes:

Jobs retained are primarily in architectural, engineering, and construction services to include: architecture, mechanical, electrical, fire protection and control systems personnel. Also included are project management, site management, procurement, environmental, safety, project control and construction trade personnel.

Otis Elevator Company, Farmington, CT, received three sub-recipient contracts that totaled $586,832, and Standard Builders, Memphis, TN, received a contract for $87,500.

The Q1 project description gives these details:

Final Design documents have been submitted, with preconstruction services, procurement, and mobilization complete. Construction began in January 2010 and is scheduled to be completed in May 2010.

How did this $1.6 million project for 4.34 jobs help the Kansas economy long term?  Why are these jobs reported for Kansas, and not New York or Tennessee — or Connecticut where the elevator company is?

Case Study 2:  Research Project.  The National Institutes of Health awarded a $589,613 medical research grant for “Psychopharmacology of Widely Available Psychoactive Natural Products”  to the University of Kansas Center for Research in Lawrence.

Recovery.gov reports this will create 2.1 jobs, computed by the number of hours worked during the 520-hour quarter.  But the sub-recipient of this grant, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles was listed as a subcontractor receiving $589,613 — all of the money — and the “local_amount” in Lawrence was $0.

Why are these 2.1 jobs listed for Kansas when all the work is in California?

Vendors.  Table 1 above shows 720 awards to various vendors in the Kansas data.  Recovery.gov does not give the city location for these vendors but does provide a 9-digit zip code.

Using the fact that Kansas 5-digit ZIPs range from 66002 (Atchison) to 67954 (Rolla), only 459 of the 720 vendors were found to be at Kansas addresses.  The vendors not in Kansas have not yet been studied.

The following table shows the “top” stimulus vendors based on the number of times they were mentioned in the Q1 data.

Table 2.  Vendors Mentioned 4 times or more in Kansas Q1 Stimulus Data

Stimulus Vendor	Count
Bg Consultants, Inc	13
Venture Corporation	13
City Of Wichita	11
Kirkham Michael & Associates	8
Apac Kansas, Inc. — Shears Division	7
South East Kansas Regional Planning Commission	7
City Of Overland Park	6
Bucher,Willis And Ratliff	5
King Construction Company, Inc.	5
Westar Energy	5
Beachner Construction Company, Inc.	4
City Of Lawrence	4
City Of Olathe	4
City of Shawnee	4
Hws Consulting Group Inc.	4
Mcafee Henderson Solutions, Inc.	4
Professional Engineering Consultants, P.A.	4
Schwab-Eaton, P.A.	4

Prime Contractors / Sub-Recipients.

The stimulus data for Kansas from Recovery.gov is a set of awards (award_key) of stimulus projects.  While most of these projects only involve Kansas recipients, some of the records from the state file must be deleted to ignore portions of projects that happen outside Kansas.

The following table only shows the sum of  “local amounts” for Kansas recipients for the various funding sources of stimulus money:

Table 3.  Kansas Stimulus Spending by Funding Agency

Funding Agency	Local Amount	Prime	Sub-Recipient
Administration for Children and Families	$37,613,923	$29,310,369	$8,303,554
Administration on Aging	$1,265,164	$400,000	$865,164
Agricultural Research Service	$459,161	$459,161	-
Air Mobility Command	$770,381	$378,479	$391,902
Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy	$485,100	$485,100	-
Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing	$107,036	$107,036	-
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention	$2,505,164	$2,441,500	$63,664
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services	$247,681	$247,681	-
Community Development Financial Institutions	$600,000	$600,000	-
Corporation for National and Community Service	$661,740	$30,809	$630,931
Department of Agriculture / Agricultural Marketing Service	$6,180,810	$6,180,810	-
Department of Defense (except military departments) / U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, except civil program financing	$5,451,002	$3,393,296	$2,057,706
Department of Education	$349,320	$349,320	-
Department of Energy	$146,610,566	$112,700,298	$33,910,268
Department of Health and Human Services	$16,010,066	$16,010,066	-
Department of Housing and Urban Development	$63,523,429	$35,572,121	$27,951,308
Department of Housing and Urban Development / Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development	$1,003,797	$1,003,797	-
Department of Justice	$34,567,570	$19,235,762	$15,331,808
Department of Labor / Employment and Training Administration	$27,565,672	$15,103,722	$12,461,950
Department of the Air Force / Department of the Army	$4,146,000	$4,146,000	-
Department of the Air Force / U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – civil program financing only	$2,645,819	$2,506,019	$139,800
Department of the Army	$20,125,243	$17,679,207	$2,446,035
Department of the Army / U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – civil program financing only	$31,282,634	$20,492,146	$10,790,488
Department of the Army / U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, except civil program financing	$7,742,403	$7,742,403	-
Department of Transportation	$264,082	$171,644	$92,439
Department of Veterans Affairs	$7,753,955	$7,056,459	$697,496
Economic Development Administration	$1,626,429	$93,519	$1,532,910
Environmental Protection Agency	$79,826,838	$22,345,603	$57,481,235
Federal Aviation Administration	$6,903,798	$6,903,798	-
Federal Emergency Management Agency	$2,962,365	$2,962,365	-
Federal Highway Administration	$347,084,485	$347,084,485	-
Federal Highway Administration / Indian Affairs (Assistant Secretary)	$97,624	$0	$97,624
Federal Transit Administration	$22,925,262	$20,430,341	$2,494,921
Food and Nutrition Service	$5,007,769	$4,158,514	$849,255
Health Resources and Services Administration	$11,989,112	$11,903,712	$85,400
Indian Affairs (Assistant Secretary)	$3,921,704	$3,628,162	$293,542
Indian Health Service	$461,416	$461,416	-
National Aeronautics and Space Administration	$3,242,758	$3,057,758	$185,000
National Endowment for the Arts	$351,700	$161,395	$190,305
National Energy Technology Laboratory	$480,001	$37	$479,964
National Institute of Standards and Technology	$12,275,527	$12,275,527	-
National Institutes of Health	$16,165,570	$15,675,484	$490,086
National Science Foundation	$8,088,529	$7,933,549	$154,980
National Telecommunication and Information Administration / National Institute of Standards and Technology	$1,974,083	$1,974,083	-
National Telecommunication and Information Administration / National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration	$998,419	$998,419	-
Natural Resources Conservation Service	$2,566,579	$2,389,392	$177,188
Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability	$712,257	$712,257	-
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education	$406,401,205	$86,845,530	$319,555,675
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education / Indian Affairs (Assistant Secretary)	$152,600	$152,600	-
Office of Job Corps / Employment and Training Administration	$118,994	$118,994	-
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services	$121,593,052	$9,095,282	$112,497,770
Public Buildings Service	$11,246,875	$8,398,092	$2,848,783
Rural Business Cooperative Service	$95,000	$95,000	-
Rural Housing Service	$2,060,100	$2,060,100	-
Rural Utilities Service	$46,940,900	$46,940,900	-
Small Business Administration	$600,000	$600,000	-
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – civil program financing only	$56,639,577	$22,250,639	$34,388,938
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service	$711,009	$604,271	$106,738
TOTAL	$1,596,159,257	$946,114,430	$650,044,827

---

Related:

• KCTV Investigation:  Road to Recovery?  Part III, July 28, 2010.
• $375 Million in Stimulus Funds Went to Nonexistent Zip Codes, Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, Jan. 7, 2010.
• Transparency Board Official Calls Phantom ZIPs “Nonsense”, Watchdog.org, Jan. 6, 2010.
• No phantom Stimulus zip codes in Kansas, Kansas Watchdog, Jan. 6, 2010.
• ProPublica shows updated stimulus funding for each Kansas county, Kansas Watchdog, Dec. 11, 2009.
• Stimulus Gets Poor ROI Marks, Kansas Watchdog, Dec. 7, 2009.
• Stimulus Funds to Pay Half of Smart Electric Grid in Lawrence, Kansas Watchdog, Nov. 29, 2009.
• $352,000 in stimulus projects for the arts in Kansas, Kansas Watchdog, Nov. 9, 2009.
• Stimulus Contractor Data for Kansas, Kansas Watchdog, Oct. 27, 2009.
• Eye on the Stimulus: 209 New Jobs in Kansas, Kansas Watchdog, Oct. 17, 2009.

---

Contact: Earl F Glynn, earl@kansaswatchdog.org, KansasWatchdog.org