L.A. lawmakers express ‘grave concern’ about stimulus distributions

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Two Los Angeles lawmakers are complaining that the city is being shortchanged in getting just $4.6 million of $110.3 million in federal stimulus funds being doled out by the California Energy Commission for efficiency projects.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) and Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes (D-Sylmar) wrote a letter to the commission chairwoman Thursday voicing “grave concern regarding inequitable distribution’’ of the federal stimulus funds provided to agencies that applied in a competitive process. “How is it that 19 of the 20 Southern California applicants either failed to meet the minimum technical score or were disqualified?” they pair wrote, adding “What options do we have to reconsider the awards the California Energy Commission has made in order to more equitably distribute the … funds throughout California?”

Susanne Garfield-Jones, a spokeswoman for the energy commission, said the grant awards are only proposals that have not been finalized, and that millions of dollars are being allocated to contractors for statewide efficiency projects that will include work in Southern California. For instance, the Southern California Assn. of Governments is one of the agencies proposed to share in $5.9 million going to a program providing for energy technology assistance.

But Padilla and Fuentes noted that $19.9 million is going to Sacramento County and agencies in that county for residential retrofit projects. They said that 57% of the state’s unemployed live in Southern California, and “all regions of California should benefit from federal stimulus investment with every effort being made to ensure that economic stimulus takes place in areas of the state that are most acutely impacted my high unemployment.”

--Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento