Flutterby™! : Stimulus spending in West Virginia

Broadband consultant's report a secret Memo's criticism called 'embarrassing'. You may remember that I linked to a report that West Virginia had spent $22,600 each for 1,064 Cisco 3945 routers for assorted schools and libraries, applications for which most of us thought a $60 Linksys would probably be better.

Apparently someone commissioned a $118,000 report to look at West Virginia's spending of $126.3 million in federal stimulus funds on expanding high-speed Internet, but the administration of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin won't release it:

The reason: At least one of the consultant's documents might be "embarrassing to some people," according to Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette.

"The documents may be embarrassing to some people ... . Embarrassing because it was someone's opinion," Burdette said. "It was a specific document, citing specific companies, and making very specific suggestions to me."

I have been sympathetic to people who've suggested that the stimulus spending was largely on projects that had gotten far enough along in the planning stages that people had figured out that they made no sense, but then along came the dumptrucks full of money, and...

Yeah.