I didn’t write about this in today’s Capitol Fax because I figured everybody else would be all over it. They were.
The Blagojevich administration’s count of how many jobs it has created is filled with errors and loose definitions that inflate the total, state auditors reported Wednesday.
Auditor General William Holland said Gov. Blagojevich’s commerce department counts jobs it expects will be created through grant programs instead of tracking the number actually created.
Holland, who is appointed by the General Assembly, also criticized the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity for shoddy administration and failure to follow mandates from the Legislature.
Further, Holland said the department changed its methods so that people undergoing training are counted as new jobs, even though the trainees are people who already have jobs, auditors said.
But, wait, there’s more.
*DCEO had “difficulty” proving that it created or saved most of the jobs it claimed. Holland said that “for eight of 10 jobs performance measures … documentation did not agree with the amount reported.”
*20 percent of DCEO’s job-creation performance measures “were poor measures that provided little insight into program effectiveness.”
*None of DCEO’s 11 bureaus have procedures for measuring their effectiveness for economic development.
*The department has no way of tracking mandates from the General Assembly or eliminating obsolete mandates. “We identified some unfulfilled mandates,” the report stated.
*DCEO Commissioner Jack Lavin came in for direct criticism. By statute, he is chairman of the Coal Development Board, but he has not taken up his duties or provided leadership on the board’s expenditures.
More here and here.