SALEM, Ore.-- Nearly 90 percent of the projects funded by the state's $175 million stimulus package have started, creating or saving more than 3,200 jobs, according to a progress report released Tuesday.

The report shows significant improvement over an April update that indicated the program was well behind its goal of creating 3,000 jobs by the beginning of that month.

The news came as some relief to Senate President Peter Courtney who was one of the chief architects of the program and found himself having to drag department heads before his Senate committee in May to explain why jobs were slow in coming.

"I had been concerned, as you know, a few months ago that we weren't getting people work fast enough," he said after the report was released Tuesday. "Today, it's all good."

Overall, the report shows that 543 jobs have been created while another 2,694 have been retained or, put another way, the program has generated about 90,000 hours worth of construction work.

The hours method is the most concrete way to look at the stimulus' effect as the terms "created" and "retained" have fairly loose definitions. According to the agency keeping track, for someone to be employed -- and thus counted -- they must be paid to help complete one of the stimulus projects.

About 80 percent of the jobs created or retained have gone to Oregonians, and Oregon products, vendors and contractors have been used nearly 90 percent of the time.

Of the 547 planned projects, 13 haven't started, 50 lack necessary funding or haven't been assigned and seven have been canceled.

Courtney said he would likely be meeting with agency heads about those projects. "I do need to do a final check," he said.

A push to include minority, women and emerging small businesses seems to have paid off, as well. Members of those groups have participated in 8 percent of the projects.

Sen. Margaret Carter, a Portland Democrat and one of the strongest advocates for making sure those groups were considered, and said 8 percent is hardly enough but that it represents progress.

"I think that it's very, very important when government sets out to use taxpayer dollars to put people to work that it's not talking to the few, but to the many," she said. "I love that. I'm very happy about that."

Despite the apparent gains, opponents remained skeptical about the net effect of the state's stimulus.

Each of the jobs, said House Minority Leader Bruce Hanna, comes with a steep price tag because the state went into debt to pay for them. He said 20 percent of the jobs went to out-of-state workers.

What's more, he said, thanks to tax increases on corporations and the wealthy passed this session, "virtually everything they've gained in that particular package has or will be killed.

We'll be lucky to stay even."