Spend preparedness of energy sub-grantee recipients of ARRA stimulus funding

Abstract

Stimulus funding remains the most extensive federal support mechanism for emergency subsidies to state governments that can receive and distribute money for federal initiatives. Sub-grantees are implementers for policymakers and public administrators to allocate funding for energy program initiatives; however, fiscal guidance on spend preparedness and cost-effective spending procedures are not incorporated into the Department of Energy's oversight agenda for state governments. The economic effectiveness of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) public policy serves to enhance energy policy formulation in local sub-grantee agencies, to improve energy policy consistency, and to position energy-efficiency expansion in policy authorship securely. Lack of oversight in areas of cost-effectiveness and spend preparedness severely restricts the sub-grantees' ability to meet expectations determined by aggressive federal government ARRA timelines conclusively. Sub-grantees experienced challenges in spending ARRA stimulus funds, including preparing procured resources for expanded energy services. As a result, sub-grantees may "cut corners" and condense procedural steps in disbursing ARRA stimulus funding to implement energy-efficiency initiatives. Research and government assessments of sub-grantees that implement energy-efficiency policies lack post-evaluation that measure the cost-effectiveness of ARRA stimulus funding expenditures. The purpose of this study is to answer the research question; What were the processes and procedures sub-grantees used to determine if ARRA stimulus funding expenditures were appropriately disbursed based on altered organizational conditions? Therefore, the research examines variations in spend preparedness of local-level sub-grantees receiving ARRA energy-efficiency grants and corresponding fiscal oversight from the Department of Energy. Research shows the influx of ARRA funds exacerbated program readiness issues and contributed to ineffective spending; 71% of the sub-grantees thought the ease of compliance with ARRA spending requirements and deadlines somewhat difficult, while only 14% disagreed. The research results suggest that the sub-grantees experiences with spending ARRA stimulus funding were more negative and required more preliminary spend preparedness planning. Keywords: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), spend preparedness, Sub-grantee(s), Qualitative study, oversight of sub-grantee energy incentive programs, cost-effective energy-saving.