Moves are being made in several quarters in our state government to ensure that the use of the funds provided our state by the federal recovery package will be transparent and accountable.
First of all, to make the injection of federal dollars more transparent to the public, State Auditor Susan Montee has set up a handy-dandy stimulus tracker on her website. Once the federal dollars start flowing into state coffers, the tracker will update daily to reflect every dollar allocated by our state government. Campaign finance junkies who like to play “Follow the Money” might find a fix during the long months in between campaign finance reports.
Also, in a move that could aid Montee, the unlikely team of Senators Gary Nodler (R-Joplin) and Joan Bray (D-University City) have guided a bill through the Senate, SB 313, that would create two separate funds for federal stimulus dollars. The first is a “Federal Budget Stabilization Fund” for money intended to bolster the General Revenue, like unemployment benefits and Medicaid reimbursements. The other, the “Federal Stimulus Fund” is for any additional funds. The idea here is to make sure the legislature doesn’t reroute federal stimulus dollars for other purposes by putting it all in general revenue.
Interesting to see that both Nodler and Bray are termed in 2010. In any case, it’s nice to see state officials making an effort on behalf of transparency.
It’s good to have transparency, but what about oversight? I’m all for stimulus spending and I believe that our infrastructure needs urgent care – but I am not down with the stimulus spending being used to upkeep our fossil fuel infrastructure!!!!! The best way to bring the changes we need in the economy and the environment is by creating local jobs to improve our infrastructure to lessen the impact on the environment. I feel really inspired after reading Thinking Big, especially the essay called An Inclusive Green Economy by Van Jones and Jason Walsh. They took the idea of green collar jobs farther and suggest a Clean Energy Corps be created that is a combined service, training, and job creation effort, concentrated in cities and struggling suburban and rural communities. Price and the market are too slow to base the shift to a green economy on, we should have a governing body put into place that coordinates green collar efforts to maximize efficiency and opportunity creation for Americans. We need the government involved in creating jobs, not just handing money out to industries.