In Maryland, the O'Malley administration has moved with impressive speed to put recovery information online. At least 18 other states, including California, Texas and Florida, have yet to launch Web sites.
A top O'Malley aide acknowledged that recovery.maryland.gov is a work in progress, with navigation that is difficult for all but the most sophisticated computer users and less-than-complete information.
For example, a Maryland state highway project, recently singled out by Obama with considerable fanfare as the first in the nation to get funded, is only partially reported online. The president, in celebrating the mile-long resurfacing project, announced that the $2.1 million contract had gone to a Pennsylvania company, but the contractor isn't identified on the state Web site.
"We're working now to make it more user-friendly," said Beth Blauer, director of O'Malley's StateStat office.
She said the governor wants citizens to be able to see "what money went to their schools, transportation projects in their community, how many of their neighbors are getting covered by Medicaid," using tools that would allow them to compare spending in their neighborhoods to others around the state.
O'Malley's efforts are in line with Obama's emphasis on transparency, which he made a major theme of his 2008 campaign.
"Instead of politicians doling out money behind closed doors, the important decisions about where taxpayer dollars are invested will be yours to scrutinize," Obama says on recovery.gov, an administration Web site.
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell said that states should go the extra mile in laying out exactly how federal aid gets spent, even if it means providing more information than the administration requires.
"I think this is the biggest test of government in my lifetime," the 65-year-old Democrat, who also chairs the National Governors Association, told a group of reporters.
"I don't want people to say, 'You hid this. You hid that,' " he added. "Regardless of the federal requirement, I'm hopeful that a lot of us will try to make this the most transparent, because it's important."
