The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009–the “stimulus package”–has been passed, which includes $311 billion in appropriations. President Obama will sign the bill into law on Tuesday, February 17, and then let the spending begin. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the plan will generate 1-3 million jobs.
In the past 12 months, 3.5 million jobs have been lost, increasing the nation’s unemployment rate to 8.5% (before seasonal adjustment) or 7.6% (seasonally adjusted). According to AGC, the construction industry has been savaged by the economy downturn, with construction workers accounting for 747,000, more than 20%, of the job cuts. Nonresidential construction is now being impacted, with AGC estimating that some 309,000 workers have been laid off by builders and contractors over the past 12 months.
The Associated General Contractors estimates that the bill includes more than $130 billion in construction spending, but about 38% of that is going to transportation projects such as highways and high-speed rail.
Although there is some money for new construction in the stimulus package, existing public buildings–Federal buildings and schools–appear to be the big winners in the bill, particularly projects involving energy efficiency improvements.
This post takes a first pass at calling out some of the more interesting spending items that appear to be of interest to professionals involved in constructing and operating commercial and institutional buildings. While lighting is not specifically identified for spending (one might have thought LED research would have gotten another boost), growth in construction and modernization activity obviously means more demand for lighting products and services.
Interesting investments in infrastructure include:
* $210 million for Department of Homeland Security for construction of fire stations
* $4.6 billion in funding for the Corps of Engineers
* $1.2 billion for Veterans Administration hospital and medical facility construction and improvements, long-term care facilities for veterans, and improvements at VA national cemeteries
* $3.1 billion for repair, restoration and improvement of public facilities at on public and tribal lands
* $4.2 billion for Facilities Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization to be used to invest in energy efficiency projects and to improve the repair and modernization of Department of Defense facilities to include Defense Health facilities
* $2.33 billion for Department of Defense Facilities including quality of life and family-friendly military improvement projects such as family housing, hospitals and child care centers
Interesting investments in public housing include:
* $32 billion backlog in capital needs, particularly those that will improve energy efficiency in aging buildings (includes $250 million for energy retrofitting and green investments in HUD-assisted housing projects)
Interesting investments in education include:
* $53.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund
> includes $39.5 billion to local school districts that can be used for school modernization, preventing cutbacks, preventing layoffs and other purposes
> $8.8 billion to states for high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include modernization, renovation
and repairs of public school facilities and institutions of higher education facilities
Interesting investments in energy include:
* $4.5 billion for repair of federal buildings to increase energy efficiency using green technology.
* $6.3 billion for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Grants
* $2.5 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy research
If I’m missing anything of interest, please drop a comment or email me here, and I’ll post an update.
The complete text of the conference bill is available here.
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