Kowabunga

How Many Congressional Districts Does Your State Have

How many Congressional Districts does your state have? According to Barack Obama’s “where’s the money” website at recovery.gov, a lot more than you think.

I have Chris Baker of KTLK-FM to thank for the inspiration for this piece. On my drive into work I heard him discussing how well the stimulus is working for some of Minnesota’s newest Congressional Districts, such as the 14th, 27th and 57th, despite the fact that Minnesota only has eight such districts (numbered 1 through 8). I just couldn’t resist looking into this, and was surprised at what I found.

All of the states I looked at (an, no I have not looked at all of them) have a Congressional District listed as “00″. Very strange. Some, like California (with 55 districts) and Alaska (1 district) have Congressional districts with numbers listed as high as 99.

Alaska is a good example, with the 1st district receiving about $900 Million, and claiming to have created/saved some 1,300 (mostly government) jobs. That means they spent some $700,000 per job. That’s tax dollars in action. The truly fictitious district 00 in Alaska saved 930 jobs at a taxpayer cost of $325 Million, a moderately better performance than the real district. And the numbers for District 1 are dubious, at best.

My former home state of California, with 55 real Congressional Districts, has several fictitious districts receiving money, but not to the same extent as Alaska. What is additionally interesting in this state is the 46th CD, which is listed as saving/creating 180 (mostly government) jobs at a taxpayer cost of about $708 Million dollars, or nearly $4 Million per job.

But my favorite of the ones I checked has got to be the District of Columbia, which has only a non-voting member at large (no CDs), yet has 12 districts listed with numbers ranging through 99, including the ubiquitous “00″. Yet in Washington D.C., CD 00, another non-existent district, received nearly $2.5 BILLION to save/create roughly 1,500 jobs. That’s roughly $1.6 Million per job.

And there are many more states showing the same kinds of erroneous data. So, my question is, where’s the money?

Or are all of these new Congressional Districts the Obama strategy to be re-elected in 2012?

Also, ABC News is now reporting on this. Ed Pound, the Direcotr of the project had this to say:

“We report what the recipients submit to us,” said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.

And why isn’t your staff validating the data being submitted?

Tags: Recovery