Eight months after the federal stimulus bill was signed in February, huge pots of money for Wisconsin programs like schools and energy efficiency - more than $1 billion in all - remain unspent, a recent report shows.

The lag in the spending, revealed in a report by Gov. Jim Doyle's administration last week, matters because one of the goals of the federal law is to boost the nation's struggling economy as quickly as possible.

Supporters of the stimulus effort say Wisconsin is spending the money more quickly than many states and that the report is misleading because it doesn't capture recent spending by local schools and police.

But skeptics say the report is a reminder that Congress set aside money in the stimulus bill for government programs and it will take years to spend it all. Federal officials haven't even decided yet on competitive national grants to foster high-speed passenger rail and better student learning - awards that are potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Wisconsin.

"From the beginning, some people were concerned that when you are moving large sums of money through the federal government, state government and local governments, it doesn't move at a fast enough pace," said Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

Some $680 million in federal money received by the state has already been spent to build roads, prevent teacher layoffs and keep police officers on city streets.

But state agencies have yet to report spending $1.24 billion of the federal money awarded to Wisconsin so far.

Chris Patton, director of the state Office of Recovery and Reinvestment, pointed to federal figures that show Wisconsin, a relatively small state, ranks 11th in the nation for its number of stimulus projects under way. The state has been able to increase spending to weatherize low-income housing even before the federal money could be touched, he said.

"We are very aggressively moving money out the door to local projects," he said. "Where there have been delays, it's been primarily due to federal agencies ramping up their efforts."

Not so easy to spend money

State officials stress that, to spend the money wisely and avoid waste, many steps have to be taken. That can include waiting for federal guidance, getting state lawmakers' approval, waiting for local schools or police to send in their plans for using the money, and then deciding how best to award it.

With many of the stimulus programs, schools and local law enforcement have to spend their own funds first, hiring workers or buying equipment and then asking to be paid back with federal money.

State Department of Public Instruction spokesman John Johnson said that, since classes began in August, school districts have been spending their grants on teachers for special education programs, efforts to help homeless students, and new freezers and ovens to prepare school lunches.

"Locally there's money that's being spent. It just hasn't been claimed for reimbursement yet," Johnson said.

Johnson said districts have until Sept. 30, 2011, to spend the money and that his agency won't know how much of it has been paid out so far until the reimbursements arrive in the coming months.

The amounts can have a big impact locally, with Madison school officials saying their district alone will receive more than $12 million in grants.

Disagreement over strategy

In one pot of stimulus money earmarked for police departments across the state, the Doyle administration reported only $19,900 of the $18.8 million awarded by the federal government has been spent so far.

Tami Jackson, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Justice Assistance, said her agency has already made about $6.3 million in competitive grants to local police departments. Police agencies have started to buy things such as new radar units and Tasers, add police dogs and beef up services for crime victims, she said.

"They're out there doing good work," Jackson said of the agencies receiving the money.

But she also acknowledged that, depending on the grant, police departments will have one to three years to spend the money.

Berry of the Taxpayers Alliance said it was no surprise that such grant programs take months or years to work. The stimulus bill would have worked more quickly if it had put even more money directly into consumers' hands through bigger tax cuts and checks to the unemployed and Social Security recipients, he said.

Assembly Minority Leader Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, said he was concerned that the stimulus spending was taking too long and was too focused on saving jobs in the public sector.

"That's turning into a real issue with the general public," he said.

UW-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky noted the stimulus bill quickly provided significant tax cuts and added payments to Social Security recipients and the unemployed. He said it also made sense to help schools and local governments as they struggle with busted budgets for years to come.

"If we had a stimulus package that pumped money in right away, we'd still have a (need) down the line," he said. "There should be a mix."

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