The Energy Dept. inspector general has done a pretty damning report on the the Energy-funded home weatherization program, writes the New York Times’ Matthew L. Wald and Leslie Kaufman. The stimulus bill gave the weatherization program $5 billion to improve the insulation of low-income resident’s homes — the program’s 2008 allocation was just $450 million. Yet only eight percent of this $5 billion (in other words, about $450 million) has been spent as the states that administer the program simply haven’t hired the workers needed to do the home insulation.
The key reason behind the lack of hires seems to be the budget deficits faced by most states:
[T]he report said action was hobbled by bureaucratic delays and by the recession itself, as spending cuts resulting from the economic downturn forced states to trim personnel expenses.
Many states either furloughed the state employees who would administer such programs or instituted hiring freezes that prevented state offices from processing additional work — even though the federal government would have paid the additional salaries, the report found.
So even, though, the federal government would eventually pay for the weatherization, the state’s no longer have the institutional capacity to hire people. This is another example of why a possible stimulus/jobs creations bill needs to prioritize giving money to the states, which, unlike the federal government, can generally not do deficit spending. Also, the weatherization program should be changed to give some money upfront to states, instead of doing reimbursements.