Job Count and Stimulus Dollars Don't Add Up In Yakima

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Story Published: Nov 16, 2009 at 7:16 PM PDT

By Peter Bukowski

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YAKIMA -- Jobs were supposed to coming to Yakima thanks to stimulus money, but the federal website created to check on that, reports little progress.

So I went to South Central Workforce Council Director Patrick Baldoz and asked if the online count that said his non-profit had created no jobs was right. "That is absolutely not accurate. We are required to report to the state who's then required to report to the federal government the jobs that are actually created."

And there supposed to wind up www.recovery.gov. The site was created so you could log on and find out where those millions of stimulus dollars were being spent and how successful they'd been. But, according to the site, much of the money has arrived and we have almost no jobs to show for it.

Baldoz says the success of programs like this one helping at risk kids apparently aren't making their way to the public. He claims they've created more than 60 jobs, but the report says zero.

"So you can see there's a whole lot of activity that's gone on locally. Why that's not being reported on the state's website or the federal website, that I can't tell you."

The Yakima School district got more than 10 million dollars, but according to the site, no jobs were created.

"In Yakima, it's allowed us to retain positions. If you go back and take a look at our reporting, there are right around 100 FTE that it allowed us to retain," says Cece Mahre with the Yakima School District.

But of the nearly $29 million sent to entities in the city, less than 40 jobs were created according to the website. Take away the 32 reportedly saved by the city, and it's less than eight.

But when I called to city to ask where those jobs have been saved, no one was able to tell me.

It's tough to know what is really going on when the companies say one thing and the report says another. One thing is for sure, we will continue to ask questions to find out where this money is going and find out if it's really doing what they say.

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