Report: Stimulus Weatherization Program Bogged Down by Red Tape

Feb.17, 2010— -- A $5 billion federal weatherization program intended to save energy and create jobs has done little of either, according to a new report obtained by ABC News on the one-year anniversary of President Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

Only 9,100 homes had been weatherized nationwide as of Dec. 31, according to the new report by the Government Accountability Office, to be released Thursday.

The Department of Energy, which runs the program, said it actually weatherized more than 22,000 homes last year with Recovery Act funds. Either way, it's a far cry from the 593,000 that the government plans to complete during the course of the Recovery Act, which runs through March 2012.

What's the Hold Up?

The problem is red tape, according to the GAO. Local governments and contractors have to jump through several hoops before getting full funding.

For example, the Recovery Act included so-called Davis-Bacon requirements for all weatherization grants. Davis-Bacon is a Depression-era law meant to ensure equitable pay for workers on federally funded projects. Under that law, the grants may only go to projects that pay a "prevailing wage" on par with private-sector employers.

The Department of Labor spent most of the past year trying to determine the prevailing wage for weatherization work, a determination that had to be made for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States, according to the GAO report.

Secondly, many homes have to go through a National Historic Preservation Trust review before work can begin. The report quoted Michigan state officials as saying that 90 percent of the homes to be weatherized must go through that review process, but the state only has two employees in its historic preservation office.

But the pace of weatherization is starting to pick up because the Davis-Bacon issues have now "largely been resolved," according to the Department of Energy.

"The states received wage determinations for every county in the U.S. before Labor Day and worked through the process of updating their systems and their wage rates throughout the fall," the Department of Energy said in a written statement.

"The agency is on a path to reach its target of weatherizing 20,000-30,000 homes a month."