California State University officials may have followed federal guidelines in reporting that stimulus money saved an inordinate number of campus jobs, but someone in the university system should have objected to reporting the numbers because "they don't make sense," California's stimulus watchdog official said Friday.

CSU reported late last week that federal stimulus dollars let them retain about 26,000 full-time-equivalent positions. That's more than half of CSU's work force, and it's more jobs than the state of Texas and 44 other states reported saving with stimulus money.

A CSU spokeswoman told The Bee earlier this week that the system reported the jobs in strict accordance with federal guidelines, but confirmed that half the system's work force would not have been laid off if not for stimulus dollars.

"If I were them, and I followed instructions to a T, and I came up with a number like that, I would have said, 'Whoa,' " said Laura Chick, the state's inspector general for Recovery Act funds. "Then I would have been on the phone saying, 'These numbers don't look right.' "

The CSU numbers represented about one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reportedly saved by federal stimulus funds in California.

Chick said several officials at the California Recovery Task Force told her Friday that they had noticed CSU's numbers seemed different. But, Chick said, they apparently determined that the numbers were being reported according to federal rules.

The problem, Chick said, may have been that CSU got a big chunk of money in a short time frame. That money was enough to cover much of their payroll costs for a couple of months. But California's share of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund – the stimulus program bankrolling the jobs in question – is already half spent, so CSU will likely revert to paying most of their employees with normal funding.

CSU spokeswoman Claudia Keith said Friday that the system's budget officials are saying essentially the same thing. "The jobs were retained, not saved," she said. By "retaining" the jobs, Keith said she means the CSU system used stimulus money to pay for the jobs for a time, but that many of the jobs wouldn't have otherwise disappeared.

Keith said it could be months before the CSU system can determine how many jobs were actually "saved" by stimulus funds.

Chick said she is writing a letter to CSU Chancellor Charles Reed asking for more details about CSU's job figures and, depending on what she hears, she may recommend the system revise them.

Federal guidelines for reporting job numbers are lengthy, but also can be blunt. One White House stimulus document says, "A job retained is an existing position that would not have been continued to be filled were it not for Recovery Act funding."

Chick said she will also look at job figures reported by the California Economic Development Department showing 12,000 FTE positions created through a skills training program. That program, Chick said she had been told, was not meant to create reportable jobs. "These were temporary jobs, just for the summer," Chick said.

Chick said stimulus reporting will likely improve as more money is distributed.

"I'm not surprised that there have been some mistakes," she said. "Everybody is kind of watching and they want to know, 'What is the truth?' I don't think we are there yet."

Call The Bee's Phillip Reese, (916) 321-1137.