Project Spotlight – Dam Replacement in the Everglades National Park
Recipient: Jay Cashman, Inc.
Award Amount: $6,119,056
The recipient reported that these Recovery funds would be used to:
- Construction two new dam structures to stop the uncontrolled flow of seawater flushing into and out of the Everglades.
- Demolition of the failed existing dam structures
- Clearing and removal of mangroves
- Planting of new plants upon completion of the backfill
- Replacement of rip rap
- Installation of new channel marker piles and mooring piles
- Installation of an access gangway and ramp for passage over the dam
Project Status: Completed
To see how funds were distributed between the project’s prime and sub recipients and to learn more about the project, check out the Award Summary or enter your zip code to find Recovery projects near you.
Project Spotlight – Nevada Public Transportation Improvements
Recipient: Nevada Department of Transportation
Award Amount: $7,350,247
These Recovery funds will be used to:
- Purchase 42 new buses to replace buses that have exceeded their useful life.
- Construct a transit fueling and storage facility, as well as 22 new bus shelters
- Construct a fiber optic communications system
- Purchase fareboxes and automatic vehicle locators
- Provide operating funds to run transit services
Project Status: More than 50% completed
To learn more about the project, check out the Project Summary or enter your zip code to find Recovery projects near you.
Recovery Funds Help Green Federal Buildings
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is using $5.5 billion in Recovery funds to convert federal buildings across the nation to high-performance green buildings, and to build new energy-efficient federal buildings, courthouses and land ports of entry.
Take a look at GSA’s interactive map to see details about investments in federal buildings across the country.
Photo of the Week – Thumbs Up!
Photo contributed to the Recovery.gov Flickr Group by ARM Climate Research Facility
Workers at the Southern Great Plains celebrate the installation of the first of three X-band scanning ARM precipitation radars that will be installed thanks to the Recovery Act. Pictured in photo: Rick McMillen (second from left), SGP site operations, and (remaining left to right) Stephen Deramus, Walter Romero, and Marcus Smith, Radtec Engineering, Inc.
Photo by Lynne Roeder
To see more photos of Recovery projects or add your own photos, visit the Recovery.gov Flickr Group.
Recovery Funding Goes To Community Health Centers
Community Health Centers across the country have received Recovery Act assistance through Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant programs. The Recovery Act provided $500 million to HRSA’s Community Health Center Programs to support increased demand at existing and new service sites. The Recovery Act also provided $1.5 billion in funding for construction, renovation and health information technology equipment. More than 1,100 centers have received funding to make capital investments and hire additional staff. These Federally Qualified Health Centers serve people regardless of their ability to pay.
Visit the Department of Health and Human Services website to read more about how three community health centers in California, Nebraska, and Alabama are using Recovery funds.
Template for the Future
Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has laid out a plan for expanding transparency and accountability beyond Recovery funding to include all government spending.
This plan would eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies, saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and providing increased accountability and transparency. The main feature of the plan is the elimination of eight separate data collection websites across government. Instead, they would be rolled up and combined into a “universal one-stop shop” consisting of three sites: one to collect data from recipients of federal awards; one to collect agency data; and one to display and visualize all the data, just as Recovery.gov does for Recovery data.
Read the entire Template for the Future.
Meet the Board – Daniel R. Levinson
The Honorable Daniel Levinson
Mr. Levinson has headed the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since September 8, 2004. HHS is among the largest departments in the federal government, encompassing Medicare, Medicaid, public health, medical research, food and drug safety, welfare, child and family services, disease prevention, Indian health, and mental health services. It also exercises leadership responsibilities in public health emergency preparedness and combating bio-terrorism.
As Inspector General, Mr. Levinson is the senior official responsible for audits, evaluations, investigations, and law enforcement efforts, relating to HHS programs and operations. He manages an independent and objective nationwide organization of over 1500 professional staff members dedicated to promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in HHS programs and addressing fraud, waste, and abuse.
In the wider government accountability community, Mr. Levinson serves on the Executive Council of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, where he chairs the Committee on Inspection and Evaluation. He previously served as Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Public Inquiry. Earlier in his career, he was a Government Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Mr. Levinson has devoted much of his career to government oversight. Prior to his appointment at HHS, he served for four years as Inspector General of the U. S. General Services Administration, where he oversaw the integrity of the federal civilian procurement process. He earlier served a seven-year term as Chairman of the U. S. Merit Systems Protection Board, where he oversaw the integrity of the federal civilian personnel system and adjudicated a wide range of personnel appeals pursuant to the Civil Service Reform Act. He is also a former General Counsel of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Levinson is a graduate of the University of Southern California, and holds law degrees from Georgetown and George Washington Universities. He is a member of the American Bar Association and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
Photo of the Week – Doris Point Boat Launch
Contributed to the Recovery.gov Flickr Group by: Forest Service - Northern Region
The first boat is launched from the new Doris Point Boat Launch on Hungry Horse Reservoir. The boat launch and day-use site opened to the public August 19, 2010, and is located on the west-side of the Hungry Horse Reservoir on the Hungry Horse-Glacier View Ranger District of the Flathead National Forest. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $290,000 to help complete the site that includes a new double-lane concrete boat ramp with a loading/unloading dock, a 70-space parking area, host site, picnic area and restrooms.
For more information on the Flathead National Forest, visit www.fs.fed.us/r1/flathead/
To see more photos of Recovery projects or add your own photos, visit the Recovery.gov Flickr Group.
Recovery Board Response to Blogger Michelle Malkin
In a recent column, Michelle Malkin made a number of misstatements. The Recovery Board takes issue with those statements. The following is the Board’s response e-mailed to her today:
Dear Michelle,
In your recent column, “Porkulus: Cash for Tax Cheats,” you are understandably disturbed by the number of recipients receiving Recovery Act funds despite owing millions in unpaid corporate, payroll and other taxes. So are we. Far from having “patted itself on the back for its transparency,” the Recovery Board would like to stop this sort of egregious break of faith with the taxpaying public, but we cannot do so for two reasons.
First, the Recovery Board does not give out the stimulus money and has no involvement whatsoever in what states, institutions or businesses receive contracts, grants or loans. That is a decision made solely by the 28 federal agencies charged with distributing Recovery funds.
Second, IRS information is confidential, and neither the Recovery Board nor the agency giving out this money has access to information on tax liabilities of a potential recipient. Although the Government Accountability Office was able to review the records of many recipients that owe taxes, you find no names or identifying characteristics in the GAO report. That is because of the confidentiality of this data.
If you had read the GAO report, you would find that the Recovery Board and one of its members, J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, have raised repeatedly the lack of adequate oversight of Recovery spending and tax delinquencies because of this inability to access IRS tax information.
The Recovery Board, in its response, also pointed out that if we had access to this information, we could use unpaid tax data and other related information to create a risk-based model that government agencies could rely on when evaluating potential recipients of federal contracts, grants and loans.
You should also understand that the Recovery Board is not, as you write, “the Obama administration’s stimulus oversight board.’’ Congress created the Board as an independent agency.
We would have gladly discussed these issues and the type of information the Recovery Board can use in identifying potential fraud, waste and abuse of Recovery funds if you had contacted us before writing your column. Perhaps if you better understood the situation, you might have called for a change in the laws and regulations to correct this serious shortcoming rather than incorrectly accusing the Recovery Board of failing “to stop the plundering in the name of job creation.”
Finally, please feel free to publish this letter.
Sincerely,
Ed Pound
Director of Communications
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
Washington, D.C.
(O) 202-254-7930
Recovery Act Funds Volcano Monitoring
The U.S. Geological Survey has received $15.2 million in Recovery Act funding to modernize the monitoring networks and warning systems at five different volcano observatories in Alaska, Washington, Hawaii, California, and Yellowstone National Park. These funds will be used to replace aging analog seismic instruments with digital instruments that record a broader range of data. Improvements will also be made to the transmission systems that send data from volcanoes to the observatories for analysis.
To learn more about how Recovery funds are helping improve volcano monitoring visit the Department of the Interior’s website.
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