State Finds a Way to Make Weatherization Work

By Becca AAronson
For conservative opponents of the federal stimulus package, the beleaguered Weatherization Assistance Program has been an easy target. Texas’ component of the Obama administration’s “green jobs” initiative has also been plagued by well-documented problems and criticisms, and the disdain of Texas’ Republican leadership, including Gov. Rick Perry. 

 But despite the Texas program’s rocky start, state officials say it has actually been quite successful — surpassing its goal of weatherizing more than 38,000 homes and creating more than 1,000 jobs across the state.
The federal weatherization program, created to help low-income families make energy-efficient upgrades to their homes, has been around since the oil crisis of the 1970s sent electricity prices soaring. But its relatively small annual budget did not generate much attention until the Obama administration infused the program with $5 billion as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As a result, Texas’ $13 million annual weatherization budget got topped off with $327 million in stimulus money.
“When the federal government comes at you unannounced and throws $327 million at you and says, ‘Go create something and here’s a bunch of rules,’ it’s a real challenge,” said Tim Irvine, executive director of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, which administers the program.
The program came with a set of rigorous federal regulations. Contractors had to perform specific diagnostic tests to determine the most cost-effective way to weatherize a home. And as with all stimulus programs, employers had to abide by the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires them to pay fair and competitive wages determined by the United States Department of Labor.
The program got off to a slow start nationally, and Texas was no exception. Nearly a year after the passage of the stimulus legislation, Texas’ program had created only 118 jobs and failed to weatherize a single home.
In a letter to the Department of Energy in March 2010, Michael Gerber, then the executive director of the housing and community affairs department, blamed the federal government for the delay. He wrote that it had taken the Department of Labor nearly a year to determine appropriate wage rates and that Texas did not receive the information until December 2009. Most states, including Texas, chose to wait on weatherizing homes rather than risk overpayment or underpayment.
The governor’s office places the blame even higher — with the Obama administration. “This is yet another example of a stimulus program that was poorly designed and has come under national scrutiny for wasting taxpayer funds,” Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for the governor, wrote in an e-mail.
But Kevin Jewell, an economic analyst for Texas Low Income Housing Information Service who has chronicled the progress of the state program on that nonprofit’s blog, said state officials used the lack of Davis-Bacon wage information as an excuse, and the delay occurred because the housing department had to build the program from scratch.
“They were ramping the program up from a small annual program to a very large, short-term, one-time project,” he said. “Although they had that seed from the original program, that in my mind is the real reason things had a slow start.”
Many of the small nonprofits in Texas’ existing network of weatherization providers struggled with the increased financing and new federal regulations. Fourteen of the original providers gave back a combined $29 million in weatherization money because they were not prepared to administer the program; several providers forfeited their stimulus contracts altogether, and at least two of those nonprofits were involved in investigations for fraud.
The providers who stayed in the program often had contractors who were good at the technical aspects of their jobs but were not at record keeping, Mr. Irvine said — a major problem given federal audit procedures and other requirements.
A Texas Tribune review of more than 130 housing and community affairs department monitoring reports found weatherization providers consistently had problems accurately documenting expenses and conducting energy audits, which in some cases led to thousands of dollars in unexplained costs and improper installations of materials. More than half of the 3,500 weatherized homes inspected by the department had workmanship deficiencies that contractors were ordered to return to fix.
The monitoring reports also reveal more severe transgressions.