The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), or "the stimulus" provided funds for a broad range of priorities, but did Texas spend the money wisely?
Public Citizen has been a member of a coalition that has attempted to bring more sunshine, more transparency, and more good government to the implementation on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as “The Stimulus.” Two years since its passage much of the funding appropriated has been spent, but there is still more to do. Our groups yesterday released a report “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over: The Texas Legislature and the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act” which can be found at http://www.txstimulus.com.
It is worth noting that the txstimulus.com website was originally used by a select committee in the Texas Legislature charged with keeping an eye on how Texas spent ARRA funds. Bee Moorhead in an interview with the Texas Tribune explained what happened to the website and all of that information the committee had been collecting:
During his days as select committee chairman, (Jim) Dunnam (chair of the select committee) set up a website — txstimulus.com — to provide documents and information on stimulus spending, culled from the committee’s hearings and correspondence with the Texas congressional delegation. In March, the domain, which was registered in Dunnam’s name, lapsed, taking all the information it contained therein.
Enter Bee Moorhead, executive director of Texas Impact, a statewide interfaith organization, and the new owner of txstimulus.com. “Legislative committees can use the internet really effectively, and there are great examples of committees doing that this year,” said Moorhead, citing efforts of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, “but those websites contain government information, and they can’t just be handled like some individual’s blog.”
The coalition also released a set of recommendations to help Texas improve its transparency. #4 is my personal favorite and one of my pet issues, but all are important. These recommendations are explored more in depth in the press release accompanying this post, which is available in full after the jump.
1. Draw down the unemployment dollars.
2. Keep a legislative eye on the game till it’s over.
3. Move the low-income weatherization program from TDHCA to SECO.
4. Modernize Texas’ Freedom of Information Act.
5. Make the Texas Fusion Center’s budget transparent.
6. Require more project-specific information on TxDOT projects.
7. Be ready for more funding.
8. Target ARRA energy efficiency dollars to areas of greatest need.
9. Build on ARRA health infrastructure investment.
10. Protect the integrity of all state government-related websites.
Included in our report are in-depth analysis of spending on transportation, weatherization, energy efficiency, health care, and others. I highly recommend you read this important piece of research, or at least bookmark it for future reference. Please to enjoy.
Our coalition press release:
“It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over”
Advocates Say Legislature Should Still Care About ARRA
AUSTIN, TX- In a report issued today, Texas public interest advocates urge the Texas Legislature to maximize Texas’ remaining opportunities regarding the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA). The report argues that legislators should have provided more oversight of Texas’ $16 billion in ARRA funds, but says that despite state lawmakers’ lukewarm response, the federal legislation succeeded in providing 236,000 Texas jobs, made public services available to millions of Texans, and strengthened Texas’ transportation, health care and energy infrastructures.
The report, entitled It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over: The Texas Legislature and the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, was written by the interfaith group Texas Impact with contributions by other state and national organizations. The report is part of an ongoing national effort funded by the Open Society Institute to provide private sector monitoring and analysis of ARRA implementation and outcomes. Contributors include Texas Impact, Center for Public Policy Priorities, Texas Legal Services Center, Public Citizen, Sierra Club, La Fe Policy Research and Education Center, and Good Jobs First.
Bee Moorhead, Texas Impact executive director, said the Texas Legislature bears ultimate responsibility for ARRA’s success or failure in Texas. “There has been a great deal of attention paid to state agencies and local contractors, but at the end of the day they have all been operating in a matrix designed and overseen by the Legislature. Lawmakers could have been much more thoughtful and farsighted in establishing their policy frameworks for ARRA implementation in Texas,” Moorhead said.
To illustrate the Legislature’s lack of interest in ARRA, Moorhead points to the website www.txstimulus.com.
“There was only one legislative committee ever monitoring ARRA in Texas-the House Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization-and www.txstimulus.com was its website. The committee’s interim report uses the website as a source and incorporates information on the site into the report. But the committee disbanded in December and let their domain lapse in March, taking with it hundreds of documents, including memos from the committee to the other members of the Legislature and correspondence between Texas legislators and our congressional delegation,” Moorhead said.
Rather than allowing the domain to be snapped up by cyber squatters, Moorhead said, she purchased it herself. “Hopefully legislators will take steps to ensure the security of legislatively related websites in the future. Legislative committees can use the Internet really effectively, and there are great examples of committees doing that this year, but those websites contain government information and they can’t just be handled like some individual’s blog,” Moorhead said.
The report recommends ten steps the Legislature could take during the current legislative session to maximize Texas’ remaining ARRA funds and to apply lessons learned in ARRA implementation to ongoing state programs. The recommendations include drawing Texas’ full share of ARRA-related unemployment insurance funding; transferring Texas’ low-income weatherization program from the Department of Housing and Community Affairs to the State Energy Conservation Office; and increasing budget oversight for Texas’ law enforcement online intelligence center.
Don Baylor, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, said Texas could draw $555 million in federal unemployment funds that would allow the state to reduce-or at least avoid increasing-unemployment taxes for Texas employers. “This simple, business-friendly policy change would generate more than $1 billion in economic activity at zero cost to the state budget. Creating jobs, while minimizing employer tax rates, is the logical thing to do,” Baylor said.
The report finds that lack of legislative direction hampered ARRA transparency in Texas. “The Comptroller’s website keeps improving, but it can only be as good as the data agencies are required to report, which is minimal,” said Lanetta Cooper, an attorney with Texas Legal Services Center.
Moorhead said legislative leaders lost interest in ARRA prematurely. “Texas will keep spending ARRA dollars for at least another 18 months and we could still draw hundreds of millions of dollars more. Considering the losses of jobs and services that are likely to result from looming state budget cuts, lawmakers should be trying to maximize every penny,” Moorhead said.
Recommendations
1. Draw down the unemployment dollars.
Texas still could qualify for $555 million in funding to replenish our Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund. Legislators should make the statutory changes needed to qualify for its remaining unemployment insurance funds and access those funds before the deadline.
2. Keep a legislative eye on the game till it’s over.
There was only one legislative committee formally charged with monitoring ARRA implementation in Texas, and it has disbanded. The leadership should reconstitute the House Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization and charge the committee with monitoring and reporting on Texas’ ARRA implementation until all ARRA funds that flowed through the state treasury have been exhausted and final reports have been issued.
3. Move the low-income weatherization program from TDHCA to SECO.
SECO and TDHCA both received ARRA funds for energy efficiency, and both agencies administered their funds through a large number of grants to local public and private sub-recipients. SECO’s administration has gone more smoothly that TDHCA’s, and in the future SECO can expect to continue to administer the same kinds of funds through a variety of programs. TDHCA’s weatherization program should be transferred to SECO. Legislators should require SECO to report more information than is currently required about recipients and sub-recipients in the program and make changes to improve sub-recipient performance.
4. Modernize Texas’ Freedom of Information Act.
Texas’ implementation of ARRA transparency provisions pointed out opportunities to improve public information across the board because of the availability of the Internet. The Legislature should modernize the Texas Freedom of Information Act to account for new forms of electronic information and ensure transparency for all state programs.
5. Make the Texas Fusion Center’s budget transparent.
DPS used some ARRA funds to help establish the Texas Fusion Center, a law enforcement intelligence hub that interacts with other law enforcement jurisdictions at the federal, state and local levels. Now that ARRA funds are gone, DPS needs continued appropriations to fund the Fusion Center’s activities, but DPS’s budget is not clear from which line items those additional appropriations come. Legislators should provide additional budget transparency to the Texas Fusion Center through a line item appropriation with associated performance measures.
6. Require more project-specific information on TxDOT projects.
TxDOT set up a special “Project-Tracker” website to provide transparency in their funding decisions, but the site does not include outcomes information, especially regarding impacts on local communities and populations of interest. Legislators should require a greater level of detail on TxDOT’s website regarding specific projects and their impact on local communities.
7. Be ready for more funding.
Texas and other states face ongoing challenges in maintaining and improving the nation’s transportation infrastructure, and congressional discussions about future transportation initiatives including the possibility of more bond opportunities. Legislators and TxDOT should investigate whether Texas could position itself favorably for future federal transportation funding, including ARRA funds turned back by other states, especially by increasing its commitment to rail transportation.
8. Target ARRA energy efficiency dollars to areas of greatest need.
SECO’s energy efficiency programs are designed to maximize return on investment, but including additional criteria would ensure that they also maximize benefit for populations of special interest to the Legislature. Lawmakers could refine SECO’s energy efficiency programs by requiring that a share of remaining ARRA funds and future revolving loan funds target disadvantaged geographic areas or populations.
9. Build on ARRA health infrastructure investment.
Federal investment in Texas’ Community Health Centers increased access to primary care for many Texans in medically underserved areas. Legislators should look to Community Health Centers and similar community-based health care delivery models to meet some of the needs of the large newly insured population expected to result from implementation of national health insurance reform.
10. Protect the integrity of all state government-related websites.
The legislative committee charged with monitoring Texas’ ARRA implementation dissolved and its Internet domain registration expired, deleting scores of state documents that are referenced in the committee’s interim report. Legislators should require that the administrative contact for the URL of any website that styles itself as the website of a legislative entity such as a committee must be a staff member of a state agency.
The full report is available online at http://texasimpact.org/content/it-aint-over-till-its-over-texas-legislature-and-american-reinvestment-and-recovery-act or http://www.txstimulus.com
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