More than $132 million in weatherization funds for the state of North Carolina from the stimulus bill is still working its way through federal and state administrative ranks more than six months after the bill’s passage.

For Richmond County, that means 91 families qualified to have their home weatherized to cut down on heating costs this winter will have to remain out in the cold until the money gets through the bureaucratic’ red tape.

Richmond County’s share is more than $900,000.

“Those families are all eligible to receive weatherization assistance,” Sandhills Community Action Program Executive Director Nezzie Smith said on Thursday. “Every day more people are applying, but we can’t do anything about it until the money gets here.”

“We’re waiting” was her initial reply to an inquiry about these stimulus funds, first reported on by the Daily Journal in the first quarter of the 2009 calendar year.

Other local organizations are also waiting for the money to get here.

“We had contacted the Sandhills Community Action Program to see if we could partner with them to reach the needs of our folks in our service area that were struggling with energy efficiency issues in the early part of the year,” said Pee Dee Electric Cooperative Membership Marketing Director Bruce Simmons.

He explained the weatherization program fits well with several energy conservation programs the non-profit utility is already sharing with its customers, including offering discounted prices on energy-saving CFL light bulbs and tips on how to cut down on electricity usage.

“We serve a rural area, and many of our customers’ homes are sub-par dwellings that are not weatherized,” he said. “When we found out about this stimulus funding to help retrofit and improve these homes with insulation and new ductwork and other upgrades, we absolutely wanted to do anything we could to help our customers have access to it.”

The utility “didn’t get very far” at that time, Simmons said, and hasn’t since either.

He said they were told all 2009 funding would have to go toward training staff and contractors.

“We were told to be patient while they got up to speed,” he said. “We have customers that we know fall under those guidelines, and we’re ready to assist them now.”

Without the money’s arrival to this point, it appears that it may be 2010 funding that goes to train people to do this work.

“We’ll be contracting that work out,” Smith explained about the program. “We have one (qualified weather auditor) that we contract with at the present time. Even before the stimulus, the staff really has to be qualified to do this work, but most of the staff we have been involved with weatherization in the past. When they receive their training they’ll be ready to go.”

One of North Carolina’s Eighth District U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell’s first orders of business when he got to Washington was to champion the stimulus bill.

He even had an amendment to the bill named after him, the Kissell Amendment, which stipulated certain agencies within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s uniforms be made in America from American products.

That stipulation in the law has also been met with resistance at Homeland Security.

His press secretary said Kissell’s support of the bill was given with the understanding it wouldn’t be held in limbo by various agencies.

“That was not the congressman’s intent, and we will work with these folks to get it straightened out,” Haven Kerchner wrote in a Thursday e-mail.

The stimulus funds for weatherization are intended to be funneled through the North Carolina Department of Commerce to the state’s community action programs who in turn distribute the services to low-income families.

North Carolina Department of Commerce Weatherization Assistance Program Manager Harold Davis said “most of the contracts have been released, and we are looking (to) have providers in the Sandhills area in the next few weeks.”

He also confirmed that while the community action programs have traditionally been administered by the state Department of Health and Human Services, the weatherization portion of these programs is currently being transferred to the N.C. Department of Commerce.

“The transfer is still in progress,” he wrote in an e-mail earlier this week. “No final transfer date is available.”

A follow-up e-mail asking him how many contractors are expected to receive work with this money, and what the hold-up has been in getting the funds to the area went unanswered.

For now, there is no definite time frame for low-income families in Richmond County to receive this assistance that was promised early on in 2009.

“This is something that is very needed,” Smith said. “We’re hoping we can get the money and get started before we get too deep into the winter.”

n Staff Writer Philip D. Brown can be reached at (910) 997-3111 ext. 32, or by e-mail at pbrown@yourdailyjournal.com.