Who got the most in New Mexico from President Obama’s 2009 trillion dollar stimulus package? Almost $2.7 billion has been spent in this state. Funds continue to be disbursed and claims paid. But just about all the money that New Mexico is going to get has gone out the door.

A review of the top thirty recipients shows a very heavy concentration of public sector entities, from state government to school districts. Those private corporations receiving some of the largest awards were performing work for government, principally at Los Alamos National Laboratories or the Waste Isolation Project. The overwhelming flow of stimulus into New Mexico’s public sector mirrors what has been observed in Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

Here are the top thirty recipients. This data comes directly from the federal government’s clearinghouse for tracking stimulus funds, recovery.gov. We provide a brief description for those recipients who may be unknown to most readers:

#1 The New Mexico Department of Transportation, $217,696,444
#2 Los Alamos National Security, LLC, $139,997,771
#3 Albuquerque Public School District, $124,240,797
#4 University of New Mexico, $77,864,131
#5 Washington Tru Solutions, $76,785,256 (Most of these contracts were related to the Waste Isolation Project near Carlsbad)
#6 Kit Carson Electric Education Foundation, Inc., $63,771,848 (These funds were spent to bring broadband to rural areas of three northern New Mexico counties)
#7 Portage, Inc., $54,989,139 (groundwater remediation at Los Alamos National Labs)
#8 New Mexico Secretary of State, $47,240,333 (funds for making schools compliant with green building codes)
#9 Sandia Corporation, $44,423,007
#10 New Mexico Department of Information Technology, $43,462,284
#11, Terranear PMC, $36,855,002 (Los Alamos Labs remediation)
#12 City of Albuquerque, ALBUQUERQUE, $34,999,951
#13 Granite Construction Company, $34,195,474 (Bureau of Indian Affairs roads within the Navajo Reservation)
#14 Las Cruces School District 2, $29,824,456
#15 E.N.M.R. Telephone Co-op, $27,712,881
#16 New Mexico Department of Energy, Minerals, & Natural Resources, $25,195,473
#17 Don Kelly Construction, Inc., $23,808,861 (Upper Rio Grande Flood Control Project and borderlands river improvements)
#18 New Mexico State University, $21,143,619
#19 Gadsden Independent School District, $20,002,958
#20 Gallup-McKinley County Public School District #1, $18,910,388
#21 City of Rio Rancho, $18,552,886
#22 Santa Fe Board of Education, $18,384,263
#23 Guzman Construction Solutions, LLC, $17,984,706 (Rehabilitation of levees in the lower Rio Grande)
#24 City of Las Cruces, $17,329,265
#25 Innovative Technical Solutions, Inc., $16,472,502 (repairs at Holloman, AFB)
#26 Pojoaque Pueblo Service Corporation, $15,832,098
#27 Rio Rancho Public Schools, $15,804,728
#28 Taos County Clerk, $15,462,270
#29 Pueblo of Acoma, $15,409,372
#30 Rio Algom Mining, LLC, $15,409,372

Number 30 on the list deserves additional comment. The almost $15.5 million awarded to Rio Algom neither created nor saved a single job. That’s because the money was no more than reimbursement for work performed years ago, and owed by the federal government before passage of the stimulus legislation.

Bill Richardson Cracks Top Ten

One could also argue that former Governor Bill Richardson himself should be included in the list of top stimulus recipients. After all, the stimulus package gave him over $57 million dollars to spend and give away as he pleased, without approval of any other state or federal authorities. We examined that curious wrinkle in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 in previous reporting.

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