Attached you will find the latest report from the Alaska Clearinghouse. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact me at this e-mail address or by phone at (907) 529-1103.
Jon Bittner
Alaska Clearinghouse
Alaska State Legislature Staff
This update on the federal stimulus energy funds is provided by Larry Persily from Representative Hawker’s office.
It looks like the Legislature will receive a response within the next week or two from the Department of Energy, answering whether lawmakers can wait until January to override the governor’s veto of $28.56 million in energy-efficiency economic stimulus funds and whether a legislative resolution would be sufficient if the governor still declined to participate in the funding program.
The Department of Energy also said the draft preliminary compliance guidelines issued last week for states that participate in the energy-efficiency program are totally voluntary. “It’s just a guideline,” said senior staff for State Energy Programs at the department. It’s merely a voluntary set of reporting guidelines if states choose to use them so that they can compare their energy-efficiency successes to other states using the same tools (they call them metrics). I confirmed this with the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program manager at DOE, in addition to the State Energy Programs office.
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This information was recently sent to me by Patricia Young of our Legislative Research Agency. I thought you might find this of interest particularly in light of the Legislature’s discussions regarding federal energy stimulus funds. We are still waiting for a response from the Secretary of the Department of Energy before deciding on a course of action regarding the Governor’s veto of the energy funds.
Although South Carolina governor Mark Sanford eventually made the certification required under Section 1607(a) of ARRA, he expressed concerns about the use of the funds. The South Carolina legislature then adopted a concurrent resolution to accept ARRA funds if the governor failed to accept them.
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“There is uncertainty regarding the Governor’s rejection of federal energy stimulus funds. The leadership of the House and Senate sent this letter to the secretary of the Department of Energy asking for clarification as to the dates the state could still apply for these funds. If the secretary determines we can still apply after the May 12th date, it is possible that an override of the Governor’s veto of the energy funds may occur.”
