Reports were filed listing recipient, contractor, and vendor data that included zip codes and congressional district designations of both the main location of the recipient as well as the place of performance.   Clearly, these might be two separate districts or even different states. These are to allow the public to sort data to the community and even neighborhood level. In the first filing period, there were many reports where congressional districts were not listed correctly; and these discrepancies created some concern that funding oversight was lacking. 

 

The Recovery Board, at the request of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has now corrected the errors identified by OMB as non-existent congressional district (CD) data submitted by recipients and previously posted on Recovery.gov.

 

Where incorrect CD data was identified in states or territories with only one legitimate congressional district, the data was changed to reflect the one CD. In states with multiple CDs, the data was changed to correspond with the nine-digit zip code provided by recipients in their submissions. In cases where the nine-digit zip code was not submitted by the recipient, the code “ZZ” has been substituted by the Board as a placeholder and these unassigned CDs will need to be changed by the recipient during the next reporting period, which begins on January 1, 2010.

 

Earl E. Devaney, the Chairman of the Recovery Board, stated: “In cases where incorrect data results in a significant risk that the public will be misled or confused, the Board, as it has previously done, may opt to step in and correct or omit data in lieu of the established OMB guidance that only recipients can enter or change data.’’

 

Mel Adams