- The GSA has spent one percent of their stimulus funding.
- The EPA has spent one half of one percent, while Agriculture has spent 70%.
- But an insider tells me that over the past 2 weeks the phone has been ringing.
I am not going to revisit the full discussion from a few weeks ago, but a quick check of the Recovery.gov website still causes me to question what some of these key agencies are doing. I realize as one reader pointed out that it takes time to get the money spent, but that is the key to stimulating the economy.
Take the GSA for instance, who has an RFP on the street for laser scanning services, but to date has spent 1%, that is not a typo, it is one percent of their $650+ million. Another example is the EPA, who has spent $25 million out of their nearly $5 billion allotment, that’s half a percent!!! Agriculture on the other hand has spent 70% of their funds. I understand the lag time, but that is unacceptable.
But there is some good news, which is really the reason for this blog. A person in the know tells me that all of a sudden the federally funded proposals that were submitted months ago are starting to be aggressively pursued. This would involve a significant airborne LiDAR data collection in one case. The fact is the money in these projects has to be signed up by Sept. 30. Factor in summer vacations and I think we are going to see a lot of paper being pushed around in a short amount of time.
If you have proposals out, now might be a good time to check up on them.
