Click on the computerized map of the state of Colorado on the federal government’s stimulus-spending Web page, and it displays 8,094 full-time jobs created or saved in the state.
It’s a number that is inflated by at least 1,000 jobs, the result of confusing reporting requirements, inaccurate reporting and, perhaps, overreaching at some reporting agencies.
A Denver Post analysis of federal data found:
• Englewood-based TeleTech Government Solutions listed the equivalent of 635 full-time jobs credited to Colorado created by recovery funds used to set up call centers on the conversion to digital television. Only the equivalent of 34 of them were filled in Colorado. The rest are scattered across the country.
• The city of Westminster reported that its $150,438 contract for road work on Lowell Boulevard would create 117 jobs. That would equate to $1,286 per job. The city said the estimate is based on anyone who will work on the project, even if it was for only one day. No federal officials told the city to convert to the number of full-time-equivalent slots, an official said.
• Two child-development centers — one in Colorado Springs and the other in Saguache County — reported they had created or saved more than 292 jobs combined. However, the money — totaling about $650,000, or $2,226 a job — was used to give employees cost- of-living raises. Only three new jobs were created.
• Some subsidized-housing projects listed their entire staffs as jobs retained as a result of stimulus spending even if the money was the same rental assistance for their tenants they had received in previous years. Combined, they could total as many as 200 jobs.
Trying to address issues
There is no question that stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have protected and created jobs across the state. But while the disclosure requirements have been touted for their transparency, state and federal officials acknowledge reporting problems with some recipients of the federal funds and said they will try to address them.
“We are looking at all the reports, and we are trying to identify which ones look like they need more follow-up and look like they need more scrutiny,” said Myung Oak Kim, spokesperson for Gov. Bill Ritter’s recovery program. “This process is new. It has never been done before.”
The problem centers on the federal requirement that every government, nonprofit agency and company that got federal stimulus money calculate the equivalent of how many full-time jobs were saved or created as part of the reports they submitted online.
“It’s not really surprising that that’s happening,” said Craig Jennings, fiscal-policy analyst with OMB Watch, which is tracking stimulus spending. “It’s really impossible to determine if a job is a full-time job or a part-time job.”
In Colorado, 1,069 reports on stimulus spending and job estimates were posted on the Internet last week, crediting the state with 8,094 jobs from stimulus spending through the end of September. The problems found by The Post centered on reports submitted by smaller agencies or companies receiving one-time contracts.
“It appears these were mistakes made by local agencies who need some more help to understand how to do this,” Kim said.
When the first round of reports was made public in mid-October, TeleTech reported that the recovery money resulted in 4,231 new jobs in Colorado. That made the state the national leader in stimulus jobs.
However, when the report was refined, the number released last week was reduced to the equivalent of 635 full-time jobs because so many were temporary jobs that lasted less than two months.
But further examination finds that even that considerably inflates the number that should be credited to Colorado. Only 34 of those jobs are here. The rest were hired for call centers all across the country.
TeleTech spokesman Bob Livingston said the form that the company filled out allowed it to submit only one job figure, and since the company is based in Colorado, all the jobs were credited to the state.
Livingston said the 34 full-time-jobs figure for Colorado is “essentially correct.”
In the case of Westminster, the city was never told it had to submit job numbers based on full-time employees, said Vicky Bunsen, the city’s community-development-programs coordinator.
“It definitely doesn’t say full- time jobs,” Bunsen said. “When you do a construction project, you don’t create permanent full-time jobs.”
The $150,438 in stimulus money was combined with other funds to improve Lowell Boulevard near West 78th Avenue. Without it, city officials said, the $800,000 project would not have begun.
Bunsen said the city simply looked at how many people worked on the prior phase of the street work and submitted that figure to the government.
“One guy might come to work for eight hours, and that’s all that he does to touch that project. Somebody else might be out every day,” Bunsen said. “It’s a whole range.”
“Two or three days”
David Mockmore, executive director of the Walsenburg Housing Authority, said he took a comparable approach when he reported that $262,598 in stimulus money for a new maintenance facility and tenant upgrades led to 21 new jobs. All but four were workers hired for short periods by the subcontractors, Mockmore said.
“In some cases, their portion was done in two or three days,” he said.
Similar confusion led the Community Partnership for Child Development in Colorado Springs to submit a job figure of 269 and the Head Start program in Center in Saguache County to report 23 full-time jobs saved and created.
In both cases, the stimulus money was used for cost-of-living increases for staff, some training and an extra day’s pay for the Center workers, officials for both programs said.
“They weren’t created,” said Mary McClure, director of the Center Head Start program. “They were supplemented with a cost-of-living increase. That was kind of confusing to us.”
Instead of 292 jobs combined, the federal funds led to three new jobs, all in Colorado Springs.
In other cases, subsidized-housing programs for low- and moderate-income renters were told to report their regular Section 8 rental assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as stimulus funds, managers of three projects told The Post.
All three listed their entire staffs, totaling 102 employees, because they said they could not continue the program without the rent subsidies.
“We already had Section 8 funding. This is just a continuation,” said Rebecca Firestone, regional manager for Franciscan Ministries, which operates the Francis Heights and Clare Gardens housing projects in Denver. “We weren’t going to lose our Section 8 funding before this.”
The same thing happened at Allied Jewish Apartments in Denver, said Marcia Helfant, community-development director.
“We did receive an application, and it was for our regular rent subsidies that we normally get, but now it had to be applied for through the federal recovery fund,” Helfant said. “Without the money, we couldn’t meet payroll.”
The Post analysis found that 19 housing projects and authorities that received rental assistance from HUD reported about 200 full-time jobs helped by the money.
Andrea Mead, deputy press secretary for HUD, said the Recovery Act was used to give full funding for the rental-assistance program even though the amounts paid did not change from previous years.
“The Recovery Act provided funding to fill a gap in a program that has been traditionally underfunded and therefore permitted the property owners to get their payments in a timely manner and enable them to pay their operating expenses, which I’m sure includes staff,” Mead said.
She said property owners will not have to publicly report the rental-assistance money and jobs in the future because the program is meant to provide benefits to renters and not the landlords.
Kim said the state is going to do an analysis of the job figures reported by recipients and issue a report on its findings.
The state also has put on the Web page colorado.gov/recovery a link to help recipients understand how to report their stimulus funds and jobs, she said.
Ed Pound, spokesman for the federal Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said any problems with job numbers or other figures in the reports will not be changed until the next round of reports is due in January.
“This stuff is complicated,” Pound said. “Clearly, we’ve had some problems where jobs are overstated and understated.”
Such as the submission for the town of Frisco on the $10,381 it got for two toughbook, laptop computers for the Police Department. “This grant did not create any jobs,” the town said in the comment section. “But it did make it easier for the existing officers to do their jobs properly.”
It then listed two jobs.
Burt Hubbard: 303-954-5107 or bhubbard@denverpost.com
