More than $270 million in stimulus grants awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration have gone to projects that scored below the agency's own threshold for weeding out low-priority proposals, according to data being released Wednesday by a government watchdog group.

The FAA this year has directed about $272 million in stimulus funds -- or roughly 25% of the $1.1 billion provided to the agency for airport work -- to projects that scored poorly on the agency's national priority rating system, which the FAA uses to grade potential projects. The FAA typically steers grants to projects scoring above 41 on a scale from 1 to 100. For stimulus grants, the FAA raised the threshold to 62. Among the factors it uses to assign a rating are the size of the airport as well as the type of project and its impacts on system capacity.

Data being released Wednesday by Subsidyscope, an initiative of the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts, show that the FAA has awarded about $272 million to projects below the 62 threshold.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said winning projects that carried ratings below 62 are justified on other grounds, such as safety and security. The FAA states on its Web site that the national priority rating is "the first evaluation factor and serves to categorize airport development in accordance with agency goals and objectives." But the ratings aren't the only criteria the agency uses, Ms. Brown said.

"We raised the bar from what it would normally be," Ms. Brown said. "Just because something came in under [62] doesn't mean it's disqualified."

The awards include $1.85 million for a terminal-expansion project at Idaho's Pocatello Regional Airport, $2.5 million for mobile firefighting training equipment in Virginia, and $1 million to improve baggage handling at an Illinois airport that primarily services cargo planes.

The Pocatello and Illinois projects received 31 ratings, the lowest score among FAA stimulus projects, and the Virginia project received a 44 grade. Like other federal agencies, the FAA had some discretion on which projects to award stimulus funds, but they all had to be "ready to go," among other objectives.

The Virginia Department of Aviation is using its stimulus grant to purchase firefighting training equipment that will be loaded on trailers and hauled between the state's largest airports.

Rusty Harrington, manager of the department's planning and environmental section, said the state will receive the equipment next fall and put it into use by the spring of 2011. "We're putting Americans to work on this," Mr. Harrington said, citing manufacturing work that will be done in New Jersey, Texas and Ohio, although he couldn't give a precise figure.

Bob O'Brien, executive director of Chicago Rockford International Airport, said it is "difficult to know" how many jobs will be created by the $1 million grant his airport is getting, but added that he has seen "50 different faces" of people working on the project.
Officials at Pocatello Regional Airport in Idaho didn't respond to requests for comment.