The Sacramento Bee reports on California state agencies that inflated the number of jobs they created or preserved through use of American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (a.k.a., stimulus) funds. But I think the more illuminating part may be how the money was distributed in the first place. Consider these numbers:
In October, Caltrans told the federal government that it created or preserved 1,590 jobs with $26.7 million the department received earlier this year under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
[...]
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation claimed that it saved 18,229 jobs with $1.08 billion in stimulus money, even though the department had issued layoff notices for just 6,962 corrections employees.
The California State University system said it saved 26,156 jobs – half its entire work force – with $268.5 million in federal stimulus money.
To recap: Caltrans got $26.7 million, the Cal State system got $268.5 milion, and prisons got $1.08 billion.
So basically, when designing how to "recover and reinvest" in America and in California, it was decided that the best solution was to spend about 40 times more on prisons than, you know, actual infrastructure like transit, and 4 times as much on keeping people locked up than on, you know, training our labor force to be highly educated and competitive in today's economy.
Just great.