There’s a new dog in town, and doing a great job already.
In New Mexico, the New Mexico Watchdog reported the story More Than 4,800 New Jobs Created in New Mexico in Less than a Month from Stimulus, According to Obama Administration Data, which is apparently the first news story to notice the glaring errors — some say fraud — in stimulus data provided by the government website Recovery.gov.
The national Watchdog site then reported $6.4 Billion Stimulus Goes to Phantom Districts.
Watchdog.org is a project of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity. There are state-level watchdogs in a growing number of states, including Kansas at Kansas Watchdog. The Kansas group has done some great work already, to the annoyance of some Kansas politicians and bureaucrats who prefer to operate under less scrutiny. It’s worthwhile to bookmark the Kansas Watchdog web site, and to subscribe to their various other contact methods such as their rss feed, Facebook presence, email updates, and Twitter stream.