KUOW Radio Story: Slow Start For Stimulus-Funded Weatherization Program
Liz Jones
03/08/2010
Full Story and Audio Posted Here: http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=19640
Last year Washington state received nearly $60 million in stimulus funds to weatherize low–income homes. Contractors prepared for more business. And training programs scaled up to teach workers new skills, like how to install insulation or repair leaky windows. But the anticipated windfall of jobs and work has been slow to arrive.
I’m standing outside a split–level home in Seattle’s View Ridge neighborhood. A wide hose spills through a second–story window, down into a van on the street.
Contractor Mark Rector and his crew of two guys are pumping a new coat of insulation into the home’s attic.
Rector’s company, Trius Home Performance, has been doing weatherization work for about seven years. Last year, the company geared up for more work as the state began to spend its share of federal stimulus money for weatherization. Work was rolling along, then:
Rector: “And then suddenly these new rates were imposed on us and we had guys go from $14 per hour to $48 per hour. We had to scale back to smaller crews.”
Reporter: “So when you say you had to scale back, that was some layoffs?”
Rector “Yeah, oh yeah. We laid off about eight people. And we’ll probably bring most of those back in the next few months.”
He says work derailed because of confusion about how much workers should be paid. There a big difference between state and federal rules.
The stimulus funds came with a set of rules that had never been applied to weatherization work here. The feds set hourly pay rates for a new classification of work called weatherization tech. (In King County, that rate is about $19 per hour.)
The snag is Washington state is required to pay the local prevailing wage. But the state doesn’t have a weatherization tech classification to match up to the federal guidelines. So instead of a single rate, there are 14 different rates.
Rector: “There’s sheet metal work, there’s insulation work, there’s drywall taper. We have to put in a roof jack to vent out the fan often times.”
All those jobs might be done by the same worker, but they all require a different pay rate.
Rector: “In some cases, like when we’re installing a fan, like we’re doing in this house, I have to use as many as five different rates. And the total job to put in a fan is only four hours.”
Rector: “We have to add extra administrative help in order to do all the work. It slows the workers down because they have to keep track of every minute of time they’re spending on the job and charging the right rate for what they’re doing.”
A worker up in the attic, named Tui, says his paychecks are pretty unpredictable.
Tui: “Sometimes you get about $400 or $500; sometimes you get $1,000. It all depends on what the job entails and what you’re doing.”
Reporter: “It must make planning a little bit hard.”
Tui: “Yeah it does, especially with rent and kids and everything like that.”
Oregon avoided these wage issues by adopting a single weatherization classification and wage. But some don’t see that as a solution here.
Lee Newgent is with the Seattle–King County Building and Construction Trades Council. He’s worried that a single weatherization classification could open the door to jobs being taken away from specialists, like electricians and plumbers.
Newgent: “In Washington state, we’ve done a lot of work to establish scopes of work. License considerations on electricians. License considerations on plumbing work. And that’s not something that we want to undermine. And the idea that a weatherization person is a do–all, you know a day–labor type mentality, I don’t think that’s the direction we want this market to go into.”
Newgent says about 35 percent of local trade workers are currently unemployed. They’d hope to see some jobs trickle down from the weatherization program, but he says that hasn’t happened.
The wage issues caused several months of delay, as state agencies tried to reconcile state and federal rules. Meanwhile, lots of work was on hold until this year.
David Bangs heads Home Performance Washington. It’s an association of local businesses that do weatherization and energy efficiency work.
He says the inefficient wage system and the early program delays mean the state is now playing catch up to reach its production goals. He’s heard concerns from contractors that the state seems to be going for quantity over quality. Rather than go for the most energy savings, they say the state’s doing a little bit of work on a lot of homes, to get the numbers up.
Bangs: “We’re worried about the fact that there’s less work getting done for the same amount of money. Because the programs are processing a lot more dollars than they used to because of the money coming through the stimulus, but the energy savings aren’t anywhere near as good as they could be if the programs could operate as efficiently as they used to.”
Payne: “Even if we don’t install every single measure, the most cost–effective measures that we will install, will probably achieve 80 percent energy savings.”
That’s Steve Payne, who oversees this program for the state Department of Commerce.
He admits stimulus requirements have forced the state to shift its weatherization approach somewhat. The federal program only allows a certain amount of money for each home. And now, with local wages higher than expected, that money doesn’t go as far as it used to.
Payne: “What that means is that the way we’ve historically worked on this program, it is not going to be practical at all for us to do the measures that we’ve historically done and meet the goals of our stimulus funding.”
With this program, the state’s goal is to weatherize nearly 72,000 homes by June 2011. And numbers do matter. If the work lags, the state could forfeit future stimulus money. But if work moves ahead of schedule, the state stands to gain extra funds.
The most recent numbers show Washington is nearly 30 percent toward its overall goal.
That’s significant progress, given the program nationwide has fallen way below expectations. In mid–February, one year into the stimulus plan, a report from the Department of Energy’s inspector general, called the lack of progress “alarming.” The report showed that collectively, all states plus five territories, were only a little more than 5 percent toward their overall goals.
I’m Liz Jones, KUOW News.
Full Story and Audio Posted Here: http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=19640
