Governor's Message
Dear Friends,
Welcome to Accountability.Idaho.gov, a website established to enable Idahoans to follow the allocation and use of money provided to our state by taxpayers—today and into the future—through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly known as the federal stimulus package.
As you know, in February 2009 I issued Executive Order 2009-06, creating a process for evaluating needs and implementing the federal stimulus bill. The projects and programs you will find on this site reflect the public and private proposals that were received in response to that Executive Order, and the decisions I made about how to most effectively and efficiently use the funding after a careful analysis by a bipartisan panel of experts—including five former state budget directors and three former Idaho governors.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was intended to help save existing jobs and create new ones. However, it is important to remember that growing government is not the same as growing the economy. Our job in Idaho's state government is to PROMOTE RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT, ENHANCE ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, and EMPOWER IDAHOANS by providing the reasonable public and regulatory policies, essential infrastructure, educational opportunities, and government services upon which job-creating businesses rely. We have tried to ensure projects receiving stimulus funding advance those goals.
I am committed to avoiding any use of the stimulus funds that will create continuing commitments of taxpayer dollars beyond the stimulus funding—programs or projects that create expectations of or perceived entitlements to open-ended, permanent government assistance.
I hope you find this website useful and informative. If you have questions about what you find here or the process that was used to approve the allocation of stimulus funds, or if you find what you consider to be inaccuracies in the information provided here, please click the Contact Us link here or to the left. You also can search the federal stimulus website at Recovery.gov.
Once again, thank you for visiting, and for helping to make Idaho what America was meant to be.
As Always — Idaho, “Esto Perpetua”
C.L. “Butch” Otter
Governor of Idaho