Crown Hydro is considering turning to the Legislature to get its controversial downtown Minneapolis hydroelectric project moving forward, a prospect opponents criticized as an “end-around.”

You could be forgiven if you hadn’t heard that three east metro counties have banded together to publish a blog that describes where and how federal recovery funds are being used locally.

Some government watchdogs and DFL legislators are at a loss to measure the stimulus’s actual impact apart from those catchy orange-and-white signs along the road.

The state of Minnesota has surpassed $1 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spending, with another $440 million in contracts and grants awarded and to be paid once the work is completed, according to Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Tom Hanson.

A $1.1 million grant to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Council under the federal stimulus act will allow the replacement of 35 small diesel buses, 17 of them small gas-electric hybrid vehicles.

Minnesota will receive $10.6 million in federal stimulus money to support energy efficiency and conservation activities under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program.

The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota has received $8.9 million in federal stimulus act bond authority for construction of an education facility.

Three Minnesota colleges have received federal money to expand the training of health care professionals.

A grant of $500,000 in federal stimulus money has been awarded to the Minneapolis American Indian Center by the federal Office on Violence Against Women Recovery Act Transitional Housing Program.

The Minnesota Department of Education has allocated $75.85 million in no-interest or low-interest Qualified School Construction Bond (QSCB) authority to 12 school districts through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.