Citizens will be able to go online to see how federal stimulus money is spent in San Francisco. As it stands there is no requirement for transparency for money at the local level, but the City will provide information on a Website now under construction. -DB
San Francisco Examiner
March 23, 2009
By Brent Begin
The federal government started it and the state followed suit.
Now it appears that San Francisco will set up a Web site to track federal stimulus money that is flowing to The City.
That’s the idea behind a Website under construction, www.recoverysf.org, according to Ron Vinson, chief administrative officer of the San Francisco Department of Technology. The site will track all the money being sunk into San Francisco’s “shovel ready” projects such as the rebuilding of Doyle Drive, the seismically unsafe southern approach to the Golden Gate Bridge.
The money is coming from the $787 billion federal stimulus bill.
Obama has urged states to be mindful and cautious in using the federal stimulus dollars received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The White House put together a Website that tracks the money www.recovery.gov for everyone to see. California has its own Website at www.recovery.ca.gov.
San Francisco’s version has yet to launch, but The City has time. The national and state sites have little to no data yet on their own sites, and the White House has set July 15 as the deadline for stimulus recipients to start reporting on how they spend.
But it doesn’t hurt to get started early. Vinson said he tried to secure the domain name www.sfrecovery.org for The City, but Santa Fe, New Mexico, already called dibs.
Copyright San Francisco Examiner 2009