First it was phantom Congressional districts. Now it’s phantom zip codes.

Last month, we reported on federal stimulus money credited with creating jobs in nonexistent New Mexico Congressional districts. Further examination of the most recent report on the recipients and uses of New Mexico’s share of the $787 billion stimulus shows jobs created and money going to zip codes that do not exist.

New Mexico Watchdog broke what became a national news story, and fodder for Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert. The website launched by the Obama Administration to track the destinations of billions of dollars of stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act showed billions going to nonexistent Congressional districts. The website, recovery.gov, reported $26.5 million going to ten New Mexico Congressional districts that do not exist. Those millions were credited with creating 61.5 jobs. Spadework by our Watchdog counterparts in other states showed a total of $6.4 billion reported as being allocated to 440 nonexistent, or “phantom,” Congressional districts.

The agency charged with tracking the stimulus funds, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, attempted to eliminate this embarrassment by lumping all the billions reported going to nonexistent Congressional districts into a new category called the “unassigned” Congressional district.

Closer examination of the latest recovery.gov report for New Mexico shows hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to and credited with creating jobs in zip codes that do not exist in New Mexico or anywhere else. Moreover, funds reported as being spent in New Mexico were given zip codes corresponding to areas in Washington and Oregon.

The recovery.gov site reports that $373,874 was spent in zip code 97052. Unfortunately, this expenditure created zip jobs. But $36,218 was credited with creating 5 jobs in zip code 87258. A cool hundred grand went into zip code 86705, but didn’t result in even one person finding work.

None of these zip codes exist in New Mexico, or anywhere else, for that matter.

The recovery.gov report also credits New Mexico with $131,139, though the zip codes receiving these funds (but creating no jobs) are in fact located in DuPont, Washington, Richland, Washington, and Gales Creek, Oregon.

These errors were found by checking the zip codes reported at recovery.gov against the United States Postal Service’s on-line zip code locator. Coming on top of our discovery of millions of dollars reportedly going to ten phantom New Mexico Congressional Districts, this latest discovery confirms that the data released by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, at least for New Mexico, contains serious errors. All told, we have found over $27 million dollars that has been reported as going to either nonexistent Congressional districts or nonexistent zip codes.

As in the case of the phantom Congressional districts, the dollar magnitude of the errors we found in little New Mexico was eclipsed by the repetition of these glaring reporting errors across the nation. If we can find nonexistent zip codes, we have no doubt that our counterparts in other states, which have received much more money, will again be able to repeat and expand upon our results for the Land of Enchantment.

The next quarterly report tracking stimulus funds, and reporting jobs created or saved by expenditure of those funds, is scheduled to be posted by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board on January 30, 2010. The reports are docketed for quarterly releases. The discovery of errors, raising questions about the integrity and accuracy of the data, have occurred with the release of every report.

Update West Virginia Watchdog’s Steve Allen Adams reports $28 million in stimulus funds going to what he has discovered are nonexistent zip codes.

With the quarterly American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) data slated to be released soon, the most recent data from recovery.gov still has flaws, including funding for West Virginia zip codes which do not exist.

$28 million in stimulus funding is listed as going to four unknown zip codes: 26661, 26551, 24913, and 2119. The recovery.gov website lists funding by zip code. West Virginia Watchdog compared these zip codes to W.Va. zip codes. The zip codes that didn’t match up were ran though the U.S. Postal Service’s Zip Code Lookup.

Three other zip codes included in West Virginia’s data were actually Virginiazip codes: 24503, Lynchburg; 23601, Newport News; and 23505, Norfolk. Combined these three cities received $212,249.

These mistakes comes on the heels of a story we broke back in Nov. 2008:

With the U.S. Census ready to begin, Congressional redistricting is right around the corner. However, it seems the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has already added eight new Congressional districts in West Virginia.

Over a billion dollars has come to West Virginia thanks to the Recovery Act. $2,387,321 of that total is going towards eight fictional Congressional districts: the 54th, 9th, 4th, 6th, 12th, 13th, and 00.

West Virginia Watchdog – BREAKING: Obama Recovery Act Increases W.Va. Congressional Districts by Eight!

At that time Ed Pound, director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, blamed the flawed data on reporting errors. Those receiving stimulus funding report back to recovery.gov on what the funding is being used for and how many jobs are created/saved as a result.

“People make errors, and we’ve found people are making errors in these reports,” Pound said. “Our job is data integrity, not data quality.”

The nonexistant zip codes, combined with the phantom congressional district errors, put into doubt the success of ARRA. The Reason Foundation’s Anthony Randazzo says government data needs to be held to a higher standard or accuracy:

These “data errors” or “human errors” according to government keep piling up. And it is certainly understandable that people around the country could report false information. But shouldn’t the federal government and management of the Recovery.gov website be held accountable for verifying the information? Especially if the president is going to cite the data to try and gain political favor by using it to “prove” the stimulus has “worked.”

Reason Foundation – Out of Control Policy Blog > At What Point Does the Government Admit the Recovery.gov Errors Are More than Just “Data Errors”?

The next quarterly ARRA report will be posted to recovery.gov on Jan. 30, 2010. West Virginia Watchdog will be scrutinizing that data as soon as it comes out.