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The federal Web site set up to provide the public with detailed information on how U.S. stimulus funds are being spent showed millions of dollars distributed to congressional districts that don't exist.

For Maryland, the data showed $28.6 million in 20 contracts in districts the state doesn't have, up to the 75th Congressional District. The Free State has only eight congressional districts.

On Wednesday, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board announced it was correcting congressional district data, but a summary displayed on its Web site does not appear to jibe with the data published the day before.

"It's bad news that the Obama administration's information about the impact of the $1 trillion dollar Democratic deficit-financed stimulus bill is so laughably inaccurate that it can't be trusted," said Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Dist. 6) of Buckeystown, through a spokeswoman.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Dist. 5) of Mechanicsville, meanwhile, said the Web site represented the most transparent accounting of federal spending to date, which was mandated by Congress.

"The reporting errors and confusion they caused are unacceptable," he said in a statement. "We have received assurances from the independent Recovery Board that manages this process that it will be more vigilant in monitoring the accuracy of the data that is reported online."

The mistakes represent a small fraction of data provided to track the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Maryland, according to the Web site, is receiving nearly $3.2 billion.

"This is simply human error," said Ed Pound, director of communications for the Recovery Board.

"This is what you get with transparency. The good side is that the taxpayer gets a good view of where the money's going with this program," he said. "The down side with transparency is this is raw data and the errors are showing up in the data."

Normally, agencies would pore over the data for six or seven months before releasing it to the public, Pound said.

The errors are from private contractors who received funding from the federal government directly — and not from state agencies that have received the lion's share of the recovery money, said Beth Blauer, executive director of StateStat, the Maryland agency set up to monitor government performance.

The mistakes included three NASA contracts worth nearly $25 million to a Greenbelt aerospace company that was listed under Maryland's nonexistent 24th Congressional District. Another was a $150,000 contract to a Gaithersburg company that was sent to Maryland's supposed 75th Congressional District. Several of the errors do not list the government agencies that awarded the money.

Despite the incorrect district numbers, the data do include ZIP codes, contractor names, award numbers, Dun and Bradstreet numbers, and other data that can identify how and where the money was spent, Blauer said.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Recovery Board said all erroneous congressional districts would be listed as "ZZ" as placeholders until the next reporting period, which starts Jan. 1.

The data were reposted afterward.

A new summary of the Maryland data says $11.5 million in discrepancies are listed, instead of $28.6 million. However, the new data show only one contract, for $3,200, had been assigned to a congressional district, the 8th.

The data were displayed Oct. 30 on Recovery.gov. A blogger at newmexico.watchdog.org noted discrepancies in the data presented for New Mexico on Monday. Watchdog.org, part of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, then conducted a state-by-state review of the Recovery Board's data, finding $6.4 billion spent in "phantom" districts.