U.S. weatherization funds go unspent by states

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WASHINGTON - Millions of stimulus dollars to weatherize Minnesota homes remained largely unspent at the end of 2009, leaving the state far from its projected goals for 2012, federal investigators reported this week.

The Obama administration's stimulus bill, passed in February 2009, allocated $132 million to retrofit houses in Minnesota, which has so far fared only slightly better than other states at spending the money. The weatherization funding targets elderly and low-income residents who apply for the federal aid to make their homes more energy-efficient, usually through improved insulation and windows.

Minnesota plans to weatherize about 17,000 houses by March 2012, but a report from the Department of Energy inspector general this week showed only 8 percent of projects had been completed as of December 2009 -- about 1,400 in total. Minnesota has already received $65 million of its total weatherization funds.

State officials say the report paints an incomplete picture, noting that their spending accelerated early this year. In January, for example, the number of weatherization projects completed using stimulus funds jumped about 40 percent over the previous month.

State Commerce Department officials attributed the lag to the sudden and massive influx of funds and the need to resolve some wage issues.

Transforming what had been a $9 million-per-year program to a $132 million one "takes some ramping up," said Commerce Department spokeswoman Nicole Garrison-Sprenger.

Because much of the program is implemented on a local level by community groups, one of the department's primary concerns has been hiring and training enough people to ensure the funds are not misused.

"Anytime there's a big influx of money, there's the potential for disaster and misuse," Garrison-Sprenger said. "And that's the last thing that we wanted to happen."

The U.S. Energy Department found similar delays in most states, which altogether managed to spend only 8 percent of the funds allocated under the stimulus bill in 2009.

Last month federal officials gave an award to Minnesota's Commerce Department as a top user of the weatherization funds.

The inspector general's findings illustrate the difficulty the Obama administration has had in assessing the impact of stimulus spending. The report notes that weatherization funds remained largely unused "as of February 2010," but the data only accounts for calendar year 2009 -- confusing some state officials.

Factoring in January's completed homes would have increased Minnesota's use of the funds to about 12 percent.

"We recognize the confusion that has been caused by the lack of clarification and it's something we are looking to correct," wrote Jen Stutsman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy, in an e-mail.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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