I just came from an appearance by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg to promote the $16 billion in school-repair money that Senate centrist negotiators had zeroed out of the stimulus bill last week.

Democrats were optimistic yesterday about keeping the school-building aid, particularly after President Obama referred to it directly in his Monday night news conference. But even as Miller was describing himself as "cautiously optimistic" that the money could be largely restored, the AP was reporting that only $6 billion of the construction money -- sorely important in urban areas such as New York -- would be added back to the stimulus.

Meanwhile, the Journal was reporting a school-building aid level double that size, at $12 billion. Such is the tricky state of the Capitol Hill media ... the prominence of leaks, oftentimes coming from people who stand to benefit by disseminating misinformation, make the truth hard to come by.

But one thing's for sure: that $16 billion for school repairs is getting diminished, at a time when local districts can use every penny of it.