LINCOLN, Neb. — Jackie Harpst expected a busy summer at her nonprofit housing agency, as work crews backed by Nebraska’s share of $5 billion in federal stimulus money headed out to seal windows and spread insulation.
Months after she thought work would begin, not a single window has been caulked. And she’s still not sure if her team will be able to get to work adding insulation before the summer heat passes — or even before the winter’s chill sets in.
“We’ve hired people and purchased equipment with the anticipation we’d be able to spend the money soon, and now, as we see it drag on and on, it’s just very frustrating,” said Harpst, housing director of the Community Action Partnership of Mid-Nebraska.
Harpst is among the state and local officials nationwide who are sitting on millions in stimulus money targeted for weatherization, worried about running afoul of arcane federal rules governing how much workers should be paid.
They blame months of mixed signals sent by federal officials, whom they accuse of fumbling the effort to spend money designed to give a languishing economy a boost by lowering utility bills and employing construction workers idled by the housing slump.
More than 40 states have received about half of the $5 billion allotted for weatherization efforts in the $787 billion stimulus package, according to the Department of Energy. Because that money was sent to hundreds of nonprofit groups scattered across the country, there isn’t a clear estimate of how much has been spent.
But several local and state officials interviewed by The Associated Press said they are holding back.
The U.S. Department of Energy official in charge of the weatherization program, Gilbert Sperling, acknowledged there has been confusion “across the board.”
Sperling and others responsible for overseeing the program maintain that as early as March, they clearly said that money for weatherizing should be spent in spite of any uncertainty created by the Davis-Bacon Act.
The Depression-era law requires contractors to pay wages equal to those prevailing locally for public-works proj ects, and the stimulus law applied it to weatherization projects for the first time.
Those who oversee the nonprofit groups and agencies that states have used for years to perform the weatherization work tell a different story, saying Sperling and others flip- flopped in recent months.
