DeSeve: More stimulus guidance to states, localities, on the way

One of President Obama's top economic advisors says that within the next ten days, additional guidance will be on the way for states and localities on how they should be reporting on how funds provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill.

Ed deSeve, who has the multiple titles of Special Advisor to the President; Assistant to Vice President Biden; and Special Advisor to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director for Implementation of the Recovery Act, spoke to a government executive leadership breakfast sponsored by the Association of Government Accountants, meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington.

"We believe we'll have guidance for comment sometime in the next 10 days," he told AGA members.

"It will button down jobs guidance and data guidance."

He said that while the suggested guidelines will be issued by the Office of Management and Budget, they will reflect the, "work we've done with the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board."

He also urged AGA members to provide feed back on "the balance we've struck between simplicity and transparency" when it comes to the information they want on spending of stimulus funds.

DeSeve says that as a former local (Philadelphia), and state (Pennsylvania) financial manager, he is very sensitive to concerns that state and local financial managers are being saddled with more work when it comes to tracking stimulus spending.

He says that OMB circular A-87 outlines how states are allowed to spend up to one-half of one-percent of stimulus funds to administer ARRA funds.

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D.-NY), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has introduced a House bill on data reporting under the stimulus act that proposes to allow states and localities to spend more on administrative matters.

DeSeve says that one of the current challenges for the RAT Board is answering a key question posed by critics of the stimulus bill: how do they plan to track the number of jobs created by the stimulus spending?

He says that the definition of a full-time employee often differs from state to state, and says that rather than put the RAT board in the position of verifying data, federal officials are urging states to report on jobs creation using their own definition, and use the definition that has been defined by the bill passed by Congress.

He also told the AGA that development work continues on recovery.gov, the Web site of the RAT Board, which is intended to be the public interface for stimulus bill spending.

DeSeve says that the RAT Board is "in the process of awarding a contract for the data collection system" for recovery.gov.

That contract is expected to be announced in the next two or three weeks.

Responding to questions, DeSeve told FederalNewsRadio that he has no comment on proposals in the House data reporting bill that Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a data markup tool, be mandated in all stimulus spending reports.

Rep. Darryl Issa (R.-Calif.), ranking member of the Oversight panel, has introduced an amendment to the measure mandating the use of XBRL in stimulus reporting.

DeSeve deferred questions regarding the use of XBRL to federal CIO Vivek Kundra.

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On the Web:

AGA -- Association of Government Accountants website.

FederalNewsRadio -- Full-speed ahead for Recovery.gov

Federal News Radio -- Nevada: A sure bet on XBRL

Recovery.gov -- Recovery.gov Web site

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