Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Training
    • Class Registration
    • On-demand Training
  • Useful Links
  • Team Directory
    • Albany Counselor
    • Atlanta Counselors
    • Augusta Counselor
    • Carrollton Counselor
    • Columbus Counselor
    • Gainesville Counselor
    • Savannah Counselor
    • Warner Robins Counselor
  • Directions
    • Atlanta – Training Facility
    • Atlanta – Office
    • Albany
    • Augusta
    • Carrollton
    • Columbus
    • Gainesville
    • Savannah
    • Warner Robins
  • New Client Application
  • Contact Us

Federal stimulus contract work switched amid delays

November 1, 2010 By ei2admin

Citing persistent work delays, state officials have decided to replace a contractor weatherizing homes with federal stimulus money for low-income people in Cobb County.

The Georgia Environmental Finance Authority is taking part of its $7.6 million stimulus contract away from Gainesville-based Ninth District Opportunity and giving it to Tallatoona Community Action Partnership to do the work in Cobb.

Ninth District also must team up with North Georgia Community Action to continue doing its weatherization work in Forsyth and 12 other North Georgia counties. As of Aug. 31, Ninth District had weatherized 175 homes, state records show. State officials expected the agency to have more than twice the number done by then.

GEFA is also considering taking away part of Columbus-based Enrichment Services Program’s $4.5 million contract and giving it to one or more other agencies to do the work in Stewart, Randolph, Clay and Talbot counties. Between August of last year and September of this year, Enrichment Services weatherized 79 homes, meeting less than half of its goal of 206, state records show. ESP has until Nov. 11 to either accept GEFA’s plan or say why it should reconsider.

Officials with Enrichment Services and Ninth District did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $5 billion to weatherize homes for low-income families nationwide, create jobs and cut utility bills, energy use and pollution. The federal government is divvying up the money among the states, which are hiring community action agencies, nonprofits and local governments to do the work.

— by Jeremy Redmon – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Oct. 29, 2010

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: ARRA, energy savings, stimulus contract, weatherization

Stimulus money a challenge to track

August 25, 2010 By ei2admin

In February 2009, the United States had fallen into what many economists called the deepest economic slowdown since the Great Depression.

The housing bubble had burst, unemployment was nearing its highest level in almost three decades and the once-freewheeling banking sector had turned tightfisted.

At the urging of President Obama, Congress passed a $787 billion economic stimulus bill on Feb. 10, 2009, to get federal dollars flowing into the U.S. economy.

Eighteen months later, the administration estimates that about 85 percent of the jobs it expected to create or save in the first two years have indeed been created or saved. The economy is rebounding slowly, and the worst effects of the recession have softened. Unemployment, while still high, is better than it otherwise would have been.

For the most part, mainstream economists such as those at the Congressional Budget Office agree with those conclusions. But an examination by McClatchy Newspapers and the Medill News Service has found that some parts of the country have benefited far more from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act than others, that some sectors of the economy are benefiting far more than others, and that it’s difficult to detail exactly where all the money has gone.

Among the findings:

• The jobless rates in the states had little to do with where major portions of the stimulus package were distributed. Some states with the lowest unemployment rates received some of the highest per-capita spending for stimulus projects.

• Job creation on the local level has been uneven. By the White House’s numbers, for example, Nebraska created 74 percent of the expected jobs, while North Dakota and Massachusetts created 100 percent.

• The Obama administration won’t be able to fulfill its vow to track every stimulus dollar. The mechanism that’s used to account for the expenditures is complicated, flawed and at times inaccurate.

“I know it’s political rhetoric to say we have to know where every penny is spent,” said Raymond Yee, a lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Information. “But it’s difficult to even understand where every billion dollars is spent.”

• Much of the stimulus money has yet to go out the door. As of July, $127 billion in contracts, grants and loans had been awarded, but that’s less than half the $275 billion allocated for those projects.

That’s partly by design and partly because it was difficult to get systems in place to spend money quickly for the array of new programs that the stimulus bill funded.

The White House projected creating or saving about 3.5 million jobs in the first two years after the stimulus bill passed. In a July report, the administration estimated that it’s created or saved about 3 million of them, about 85 percent of the expected total.

(Using different economic models, the administration calculates the added-jobs tally at either 2.5 million or 3.6 million and averages them out to 3.1 million.)

Benefit to states is uneven

While they agree that the stimulus package has created jobs, other economists are less optimistic than the White House is. The CBO says the job boost could be as low as 1.4 million or as high as 3.4 million. Three other economic organizations – all of which the White House cited in its July report – put the jobs tally at 1.8 million, 2.1 million or 2.2 million.

It’s clear from the McClatchy-Medill analysis of stimulus spending and unemployment, however, that some states have fared much better than others have.

North Dakota has had one of the nation’s lowest unemployment rates for the past year. In June, it hit 3.6 percent. Yet the analysis found that it’s scheduled to receive more stimulus spending, per capita, than is Nevada, where the unemployment rate climbed to 14.2 percent in June.

Economists who’ve studied the stimulus package say there’s little connection between which states have the worst unemployment and where the stimulus dollars have been spent. Edward Glaeser, a Harvard University economist, wrote in March: “Stimulus aid was not particularly well-matched with need.”

Veronique de Rugy of George Mason University testified before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in March that she and other researchers could not find any relationship between unemployment in a given area and the amount of stimulus dollars spent there.

“No matter how we measure unemployment, we find no correlation,” she said.

Though other economists recognize de Rugy’s findings, some disagree with her and Glaeser that funding stimulus programs without regard for local unemployment or economic conditions is a problem.

“If you say, ‘Let’s target states that are doing worse, places that saw the property crash in the worst way,’ ” said Timothy Taylor, managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, “is that really the right goal here? This wasn’t just inflicted on them like a lightning bolt. Rewarding failure is never the best plan.”

“I think giving (money) to the state governments was probably about as targeted as one could reasonably do,” he said. “It was no more unfair than other possibilities could have been. To have the federal government try to fix things county by county seems insane, especially if you take timely as an important task.”

Administration officials also disagree that targeting communities with high jobless rates would have been a better approach.

“Economic need isn’t bound by county or state lines and, fortunately, neither are the economic benefits of recovery act programs and projects,” said Elizabeth Oxhorn, recovery act spokeswoman for Vice President Joe Biden. “And when it comes to supporting the hardest-hit among us, assistance like unemployment benefits, tax relief and health care are directly targeted to those who need it most, regardless of where they live.”

“Bottom line: It’s working,” Oxhorn said. “Before the recovery act, our economy was losing an average of 750,000 jobs each month. In the first five months of this year, the economy has created nearly half a million new private-sector jobs.”

hard to track spending

Obama also pushed the stimulus bill with a promise that the American people would be able to account for “every penny” that was spent.

However, a year and a half later – despite spending $18 million to launch an unprecedented system for tracking stimulus bill spending – much of the reported funding information doesn’t match the dollars the federal government says it’s paid.

Although the administration reports how much each government agency has spent, that’s only half the story.

When stimulus dollars are spent, they’re funneled through states, agencies and contractors to the “sub-recipients” that build roads, do research or retrain unemployed workers. After they receive the money, states and recipients are supposed to record how they spend it and report those totals to the federal government.

That’s where things get confusing.

The $280 billion set aside for the states came fast and without clear accounting procedures. Moreover, the federal government didn’t include any money for states to hire the people necessary to track the deluge of money.

“I joke that the (stimulus) money came in the nick of time and the worst time,” said Kinney Poynter, executive director of the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers. “Many states were already short-staffed. And really there were no policies and procedures that happened this quick and of this magnitude before.”

— Graydon Gordian, Kelsey Snell and Michael Beller – Medill News Service, Aug. 8, 2010 – as published in the Arizona Daily Star

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: ARRA, federal contracting, government trends, recovery, stimulus contract

Report finds federal regulations have delayed stimulus projects

February 19, 2010 By ei2admin

By Robert Brodsky rbrodsky@govexec.com February 19, 2010

A bevy of strict federal regulations imposed on agencies and government contractors have slowed the pace of some Recovery Act projects, according to a report released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office.

Federal agencies and state and local governments told GAO that several decades-old rules, including those designed to protect the environment, ensure that employees are paid a fair salary and guarantee that parts and manufactured goods are purchased domestically have affected their ability to select and start stimulus projects.

For example, the Commerce, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development departments, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, have faced delays in complying with the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which requires contractors and subcontractors to pay workers the locally prevailing wages on most federally funded construction projects.

The Energy Department’s massive Weatherization Assistance Program was subjected to the Davis-Bacon requirements for the first time because of the stimulus rules after previously being exempt. The agency, however, could not allocate funds to state and local governments for the program until the Labor Department determined the prevailing wages for weatherization workers in each county nationwide — a task that was not completed until Sept. 3, 2009.

By the end of 2009, only 9,100 of a planned 593,000 homes had been weatherized using stimulus funds, according to GAO.

“States used only a small percentage of their available funds in 2009, mostly because state and local agencies needed time to develop the infrastructures required for managing the significant increase in weatherization funding and for ensuring compliance with Recovery Act requirements, including Davis-Bacon requirements,” the report said.

The Energy Department, however, said GAO’s figures are out of date and, according to one news report, 124,000 homes were weatherized through the end of 2009.

Complying with the Buy American provision, which, with some exemptions, requires that raw materials and manufactured goods be produced in the United States, also became a concern for some agencies, investigators found.

The Homeland Security Department’s electronic baggage screening program was delayed as officials waited for a Buy American waiver because the contractor discovered that only foreign-made components would integrate with certain airport security systems, the report said. Likewise, officials from the Chicago Housing Authority needed to wait for a waiver after they found that security cameras compatible with their system were not made in the United States.

In some cases, agencies such as EPA had to develop new guidance for complying with the Buy American provisions and for issuing waivers to recipients that were unable to meet the regulation.

“An industry representative told us that the Buy American provisions could interrupt contractors’ supply chains, requiring them to find alternate suppliers and sometimes change the design of their projects, which could delay project starts,” the report said.

The report, which was requested by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., likely will add fuel to the debate over the stimulus, which was signed one year ago this week. Republicans argue the legislation has failed to spur job growth while the White House claims the stimulus has helped turn around the economy.

“We are focused on implementing the Recovery Act quickly and effectively, putting people to work today while building the long-term foundation for sustainable economic strength,” said Thomas Gavin, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget. “Congress, in writing the law, wanted to ensure that all possible Recovery Act opportunities are available for American workers and American companies. We’ll continue to strive to do that, expanding opportunities and jobs for the American people,” he said.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment about GAO’s findings.

Federal regulations were not the only barrier to spending stimulus money quickly. State budget issues, mandatory project reviews and higher than expected staff workloads also presented challenges, officials told GAO.

To circumvent some of these problems and to expedite spending, agencies frequently chose projects that already had satisfied key federal requirements, such as environmental reviews. Others used existing funding streams or modified ongoing contracts, avoiding lengthy new competitions.

The 27 agencies reviewed by GAO had obligated $194 billion of the approximately $309 billion in stimulus project spending by the end of 2009.


(C) 2010 BY NATIONAL JOURNAL GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: Davis-Bacon Act, federal regulations, prevailing wage, stimulus contract

Recent Posts

  • Contractors must update EEO poster
  • SBA scorecard shows federal government continues to prioritize small business contracting
  • The risk of organizational conflicts of interest
  • The gap widens between COFC and GAO on late is late rule
  • OMB releases guidance related to small business goals

Popular Topics

8(a) abuse Army bid protest budget budget cuts certification construction contract awards contracting opportunities cybersecurity DoD DOJ False Claims Act FAR federal contracting federal contracts fraud GAO Georgia Tech government contracting government contract training government trends GSA GSA Schedule GTPAC HUBZone innovation IT Justice Dept. marketing NDAA OMB SBA SDVOSB set-aside small business small business goals spending subcontracting technology VA veteran owned business VOSB wosb

Contracting News

SBA scorecard shows federal government continues to prioritize small business contracting

OMB releases guidance related to small business goals

OMB issues guidance on impact of injunction on government contractor vaccine mandate

Changes coming to DOD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification under CMMC 2.0

Judge issues nationwide injunction halting enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandate

Read More

Contracting Tips

Contractors must update EEO poster

The risk of organizational conflicts of interest

The gap widens between COFC and GAO on late is late rule

Are verbal agreements good enough for government contractors?

CMMC 2.0 simplifies requirements but raises risks for government contractors

Read More

GTPAC News

VA direct access program events in 2022

Sandia National Laboratories seeks small business suppliers

Navy OSBP hosting DCAA overview (part 2) event Jan. 12, 2022

Navy OSBP hosting cybersecurity “ask me anything” event Dec. 16th

State of Georgia hosting supplier systems training on January 26, 2022

Read More

Georgia Tech News

Undergraduate enrollment growth reflects inclusive excellence

Georgia Tech delivers $4 billion in economic impact to the State of Georgia

Georgia Tech awards first round of seed grants to support team-based research

Georgia Tech announces inaugural Associate Vice President of Corporate Engagement

DoD funds Georgia Tech to enhance U.S. hypersonics capabilities

Read More

  • SAM.gov registration is free, and help with SAM is free, too
APTAC RSS Twitter GTPAC - 30th Year of Service

Copyright © 2023 · Georgia Tech - Enterprise Innovation Institute