A recent national report evaluating the quality and quantity of information available to the public on state level American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — a.k.a. the federal stimulus package — basically gives a failing grade to New Mexico along with just about every other state as well.

The report bolsters the opinion of New Mexico economists I quoted in an earlier story this week about the stimulus dollars. BBER’s Larry Waldman and New Mexico Voices for Children’s Gerry Bradley both gave a strong critique of the usefulness of the state’s ARRA website, saying that the data provided lacked the depth necessary to discern the actual impact of dollars to the state.

Larry Waldman, senior economist at the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said it’s impossible to know the effect of stimulus dollars at this point given the data provided on the ARRA Web site.

New Mexico Voices for Children economist Gerry Bradley concurred, saying that while he was “astonished” that anyone would think Albuquerque isn’t benefiting from the stimulus dollars he isn’t surprised given the state of the Web site…

The problem with knowing the impact of stimulus on the economy, both he and Waldman said, is the lack of further detail about when and on what the money was spent.

The national report by Good Jobs First gives two scores — one for overall information and one for highway projects — meant to evaluate how effective the state level sites are at giving the public information about three things:

The categories of stimulus spending; the distribution of that spending in different parts of the state; and specific projects being carried out by private contractors, including their employment impact.

Using ten factors related to quality and quantity of information, Good Jobs First ranked every state ARRA Web site on a scale of 0-100. The average overall score is an abysmal 28.3, while the average highway reporting score is 37.8.

How does the New Mexico ARRA Web site do?

For overall information — with a score of 30, we’re 19th on the list. For Highway reporting — with a score of 25, we’re 38th on the list.

Former New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya, who was appointed by Gov. Bill Richardson to head up the state’s ARRA office, was aware of the report when the Independent spoke to him earlier this week about stimulus spending in the state.

He agrees that the Web site could be better, saying his office is committed to making it happen. One problem, he said, is that the federal government didn’t provide funding for state-level oversight of the stimulus dollars, so the state had to cobble his staff together.

“The stimulus funding provided no oversight for the states, so this office is staffed by people sent from other state agencies,” he said. “We’ve had to piece it together. But just this week we entered into an agreement with Los Alamos National Laboratory for a webmaster, who will improve the site starting next week.”

Anaya said the reports provided on New Mexico’s ARRA Web site so far have been pieced together based on the requirements handed down by the federal government, but that they want to make the Web site much more useful for ordinary New Mexicans.

“We’re going to have a much better Web site, the kind from which the average New Mexican can find the data and it’ll mean something to them.”

When asked if economists would find it useful as well, Anaya said economists will most likely still have to “look behind the curtain.”