BOISE -- March Madness is all about college basketball at its most hectic. But this March, there's a new game that's uniquely maddening.

It's called making sense of the stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

"I personally don't understand it," said Sam Thiel as he munched a bagel sandwich at the Flying M Coffee Shop in Boise. "I'm not sure where the money's going. I don't know."

John Freemuth, Boise State University political science professor, says Sam's not alone.

"I don't think any of us, so-called experts included, can get a handle on all of this," Freemuth said. "It's so complicated. It's based a lot on trust, assumptions and wishful thinking, but something has to be done."

Now, a new state website will help Idahoans track the $1.2 billion in stimulus money coming into the state.

The site is accountability.idaho.gov and will follow the allocation and use of money provided to Idaho by taxpayers today and into the future.

Gov. Butch Otter has released his road map for wrapping up the 2009 session with his plan to spend Idaho's $1.24 billion share of the federal stimulus. Now, the fight is on over whether lawmakers or Otter will wind up in the driver's seat.

At a news conference Thursday, Otter said the economic outlook is so dire he'll have to cut fiscal year 2010 public education spending by $109 million and stash away $200 million in reserves in case things get worse.

He aims to slash state agency personnel costs by 5 percent, too. And rather than using stimulus money in 2010 to shore up government payrolls, he'd spend it on water and transportation projects to create construction jobs.

"I hope that suggests the urgency," he told reporters. "Every place on Main Street, we're seeing employee costs reduced. We're seeing people laid off. I think we have a responsibility to reflect that in state government."

Members of the House and Senate from both parties see it differently.

Some labeled as misguided Otter's focus on highways, with transportation due to get $229 million from the stimulus, on top of gas tax and vehicle registration fee increases he's pushing.

They also resent his no-longer-veiled threat to dump roads projects like a new U.S. Interstate 84 interchange in Boise and a new Dover bridge near Sandpoint if they don't support the next $125 million installment of Otter's Connecting Idaho road funding bonds.

They argue that state agency and education budgets should benefit from at least some of the money Otter wants for sewer, water and highway projects, as well as rainy-day accounts.

"We are extremely concerned about the major cuts to public education," said Senate Minority Leader Kate Kelly, D-Boise. "Transportation is certainly a priority. We also need to focus on education for our children. The ball is certainly in the Legislature's court."

This year's session has been complicated by the recession, plummeting state revenue and the arrival of the federal stimulus dollars. The state expects tax revenue in fiscal year 2010, which starts in July, will drop by more than 12 percent to just $2.55 billion, compared to fiscal year 2009.

Lawmakers say they could finish up by mid-April, but won't rule out detours.

(Associated Press reporter John Miller contributed to this story.)