First there were fake congressional districts; now, fake zip codes

When will those bumblers at the Obama Administration and recovery.gov get it right? First, the Rio Grande Foundation’s investigative journalist Jim Scarantino found that the Administration had listed several mythical New Mexico congressional districts that had supposedly received stimulus funds. While the Administration dutifully pledged to resolve the situation, they appear to have failed miserably.

Scarantino has now uncovered another problem, this one being “phantom” zip codes that are supposed to have received stimulus money and jobs created in them.

As Scarantino writes:

Closer examination of the latest recovery.gov report for New Mexico shows hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to and credited with creating jobs in zip codes that do not exist in New Mexico or anywhere else. Moreover, funds reported as being spent in New Mexico were given zip codes corresponding to areas in Washington and Oregon.

The recovery.gov site reports that $373,874 was spent in zip code 97052. Unfortunately, this expenditure created zip jobs. But $36,218 was credited with creating 5 jobs in zip code 87258. A cool hundred grand went into zip code 86705, but didn’t result in even one person finding work.

None of these zip codes exist in New Mexico, or anywhere else, for that matter.