Smith, a Queens Democrat, will leave tomorrow for a three-day forum of the National Conference of State Legislators in San Diego, his spokesman Austin Shafran said. Smith will attend seminars on high-speed rail and the "race to the top" program for educational funding.

This highlights Smith's new role in the chamber, what Shafran called an "ambassador for the State Senate."

Smith remains the Senate's president; he was supposed to step aside January 1 as a condition of the deal that put John Sampson in charge of the Democratic conference and brought Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate back into the fold, ending a month-long stalemate. It's unclear whether he'll be going anywhere.

Shafran said of the Smith-Sampson dynamic: "They have an outstanding personal and professional relationship. It's very difficult to lobby for federal funds while putting together a comprehensive legislative agenda."

State funds will be used for a $240 registration fee, Shafran said, but all other expenses will be paid out of pocket with the plan of having them reimbursed by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

If you spend nearly 800 billion dollars to get the economy moving again, you can be sure of three things: 1. some of the money will be wasted and/or stolen, 2. some of the money will do some good, and 3. some federal agencies will get the money out the door faster than others. One of the agencies given a large amount of new funding under the stimulus program was the Department of Energy, which received $36.7 billion dollars of the $43 billion allocated by the bill to energy projects. Since the transition to a green energy economy is critical to recovery, one would think that it would be important to spend these funds as quickly as possible.

Recall that the stimulus package included a number of provisions that simultaneously increased spending and reduced taxes. The $787 billion package spent nearly $500 billion for programs and allocated about $288 billion to tax relief. The NY Times website includes a detailed outline of the program's allocations.

The spending or non-tax portion of the bill breaks down into seven broad categories:

1.      State and local fiscal relief: $144 billion

2.      Infrastructure and Science: $111 billion

3.      Welfare Programs: $81 billion

4.      Health Care: $59 billion

5.      Education: $53 billion

6.      Energy: $43 billion

7.      Other: $8 billion

Some of the science funding is beginning to make its way to universities like the one I work at, providing funds for student scholarships, research jobs, facilities and equipment. While the impact of these funds will certainly be felt in waves, the first of these waves has hit the shore. It takes a while to make good use of these extra funds, and once we receive them from Washington, we cannot instantly build a lab or hire a researcher. Still, new grants are arriving on campuses across America, and scientists are moving quickly to take advantage of this rare opportunity to obtain extra funding for their labs. Moreover, in addition to these immediate short-term impacts, the longer-term economic benefits from scientific discoveries and newly trained researchers will ensure that the effects of these funds will be felt for many years to come.

In the Energy Department, the pace of spending stimulus funds has been excruciatingly slow. Fortunately, in recent weeks we have begun to see some signs that this particularly lumbering federal giant is finally beginning to get its act together. In early October, the Department announced a $750 million program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to "help accelerate the development of conventional renewable energy generation projects." According to the DOE website, these funds would "cover the cost of loan guarantees which could support as much as $4 to 8 billion in lending to eligible projects." The goal is to use federal loan guarantees to entice private capital into the energy marketplace. The Department of Energy has also announced a number of grant programs for universities researching energy issues.

The Department of Energy's share of the stimulus bill totals nearly $37 billion dollars.  According to the department's "Recovery and Reinvestment" website, the funds have been earmarked for various projects and allocated in the following manner:

1.      $16.8 billion invested in improving energy efficiency and developing sources of renewable energy

2.      $6 billion for decontamination and clean up of Cold War nuclear sites

3.      $4.5 billion for development and implementation of Smart Grid programs and efficient electrical transmission

4.      $4 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy projects

5.      $3.4 billion for research on carbon capture and storage and other ways to control carbon emissions

6.      $1.6 billion in funding for research and academic programs like those discussed above at schools and universities across the country

7.      $400 million to the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy for other research and technology development projects

Recovery.gov, the federal government's website for tracking stimulus spending, shows that the Department of Energy has received about $18 billion (actually $18,255,356,221) of the $36.7 billion listed above, but as of October 9, 2009, had only spent about one billion (or $1,023,085,017). The Department of Energy is spending its stimulus money at a much slower rate than the rest of the federal government. While the team at Energy has only spent about 3% of the $36.7 billion they were allocated, overall federal spending has reached about 22%, or $173 billion of the full stimulus package of $787 billion. 

While I am tempted to observe that an inability to spend money may very well be a comment on the overall competence of the Department of Energy, I will instead try to believe that just like the tortoise and the hare, DOE's leadership believes that "slow and steady wins the race."

This brief run through the stimulus spending data tells us two things. First, most of the impact of the stimulus will be in the future; over three quarters of the money promised is still in the bank. Second, we should not be surprised at the lack of impact of the stimulus on development of a green energy economy. Economists are telling us that the recession is over, yet unemployment is still rising. Perhaps the economy needs an extra shot of stimulus to caffeinate the job market. The good news is that when you look at the spending data, that extra burst of economic espresso is still being brewed.

(The state’s reliance on the federal stimulus package to start the expansion of Penn Station, along with a new piecemeal approach, were the subjects of a feature I wrote this week.)

The money, per the application, is for almost exclusively below-ground infrastructure that would expand Penn Station’s “Western Concourse” under Eighth Avenue that’s currently just used by Long Island Railroad passengers; add new entrances above ground; and install required ventilation for the station. The estimated price for all this work, which barely adds train capacity and doesn’t create a new train hall: $267 million. (Back when the project was being pushed by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, from the early 1990s until his death in 2003, Amtrak estimated the project in full—building a new station in the Farley Post Office—would cost $315 million, in 1993 dollars.)

Should the state get the stimulus funds, it would use another $109 million in federal money that’s been lying around for years as the project has stagnated, along with city and state money.

After this so-called “Phase I” of the project is done, the state application outlines a “Phase II,” which is similar to the plans that were nearly approved back in 2006:

-two new iconic pedestrian halls in the Farley building

-landmark restoration (presumably the building could qualify for a preservation tax credit worth tens of millions of dollars)

-creation of 86,000 square feet of retail

-the activation of a new “diagonal” platform under the Farley building, to be used for Amtrak service up to Albany and Buffalo

Of course there's not nearly enough money to do all of these improvements, the price tag for which is in the neighborhood of $1 billion. In total, about $400 million has been sitting around for years from various government agencies.

The full application is below. 

Moynihan TIGER Application 091509 Final

The question is on the minds of many in the transportation world these days—a first round of applications for federal stimulus money was due late last month—and now many have their own set of thoughts on the topic. Thursday morning, America 2050, an urban planning/transportation advocacy conglomerate group, released a report that recommended directing federal high-speed-rail money to routes in the Northeast, California and the central Midwest.

The report ranked possible high-speed-rail routes, and ones between Boston, New York and Washington topped the list. Of course, the variables used in ranking the routes—population, density, proximity to other cities; whether there is a large mass transit system—tend to favor the big Northeastern cities. The cost of building these routes was not a factor in the report by the umbrella group, a member of which is the tri-state transportation-focused Regional Plan Association.

The report comes as the Obama administration is figuring out just how to dole out the $8 billion it allocated in stimulus money for high-speed rail. The report recommends doing the first set of rail projects, and then, if more funds become available, to extend high-speed rail to cities that rank lower, including routes between Los Angeles and San Diego, Houston and Dallas, and New York City and Albany.

The only high-speed-rail service in the country already runs between Boston and Washington, but with an average speed of about 80 miles-per-hour, Amtrak's Acela is not all that high-speed. There are a number of proposals floating around that would increase the speed of the Acela's route, including bridge and tunnel improvements. The other routes, particularly California, would need a good deal more money given the nature of starting a new high-speed route—the price tag for California’s plan is about $45 billion in full.

The Paterson administration has told officials and others involved with the planned expansion of Penn Station (Moynihan Station) that it intends to apply for high-speed-rail money for the project, which needs at least $400 million in additional money, though estimates go up from there. The project, however, is mostly about creating an iconic rail station rather than about increasing capacity (though it would add a platform), and would do relatively little to increase speed on the corridor. 

ebrown@observer.com

Now, with little heard on the topic since, it seems his administration has chartered a course forward on the beleaguered civic project known as Moynihan Station, with the only navigable routes resting on the hope that President Obama will come to the rescue.

With no other money lying around to fill the $400 million-plus in funding gaps, the Paterson administration is pinning its aspirations on winning funding from the federal stimulus package in two separate rounds of applications, according to numerous people briefed on the matter. Tuesday, the state was expected to put in an application to Washington for about $100 million for belowground work, with plans in the works to later put in another big ask—perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars—in funds meant for high-speed rail.

Uncertainties abound, and the history of false starts with Moynihan suggest that the optimists are almost always disappointed (the project has been in varying degrees of “almost ready” since 1993). For one, there will be far less stimulus cash than there are hungry mouths to feed, and thus Moynihan will be pitted against rail and other transportation projects nationwide. Competition will be intense: Earlier this summer, the federal government saw $103 billion in preliminary requests for its $8 billion in high-speed rail stimulus money.

In Moynihan Station’s favor, the requests have the backing of Senator Charles Schumer, who urged stimulus money for the project in May, thereby bringing in a powerful voice of advocacy in the Democrat-controlled capital. Further—and improbably amid the recession, budget crises, and general disorder in Albany—many of the key barriers to starting work have begun to tumble, bringing new hope for the more than $1.1 billion project.

The first of those hurdles was the previously unresolved issue of a tenant in the expanded station, housed in the historic Farley Post Office across Eighth Avenue. In Moynihan's one-and-a-half decade history, Amtrak, then New Jersey Transit, and most recently “T.B.D.” were each slated to call the Farley building their home. But at least as of Sunday, Amtrak—which originally conceived of the idea of expanding Penn Station into the Farley Post Office back in the early 1990s before later backing out—publicly said it was back in, agreeing to move its operations across the street should a train station ever be built there.

THEN THERE IS, PERHAPS more significantly, a general shift in strategy by state officials, who now are telling others they intend to break the project up into “bite size chunks” in the words of one advocate. Since its inception, the project has faltered in large part due to its immense (and often growing) size, with whomever is in charge never able to clinch the deal despite having, at various times, all the funding lined up.

Now, those steering the project project want to separate out a first step: expanding a Long Island Railroad concourse under Eighth Avenue so it can be used by the other railroads and be accessible to the Farley building, along with over $100 million in ventilation work.

One official involved with the project called this approach moving beyond “the Big Bang theory,” the method of executing everything at once, which has failed so many times before.

Of course, there isn’t money lined up specifically for the underground work in the first phase, estimated to cost more than $150 million, though that, in the view of officials working on the project, is where the stimulus comes in.

The first place the state is looking, expected in an application Tuesday, is a program termed TIGER, a $1.5 billion pot of stimulus money doled out at the broad discretion of the Obama administration to transportation projects that can have a “significant impact” on a region or the nation. A selection of recipients of the money is expected by February.

Officials are planning a second application for a to-be-determined amount of money from the $8 billion set aside in the stimulus for high-speed rail projects. Earlier this summer, the Paterson administration wrote in a preliminary application that it wanted a total of $398 million for Moynihan from the high-speed rail pot, arguing that an expanded Penn Station would have to be a prerequisite to any expansion of high-speed rail in the Northeast. (After all, 70 percent of all intercity rail trips in the Northeast start or end in Penn Station, the state wrote in the application, where the only high-speed train service in the country currently runs.)

“Failing to implement the Moynihan Station project will condemn intercity rail passengers to a cramped and substandard rail terminal in New York City for the foreseeable future, and will act as a bar to the implementation of true high-speed rail service,” the state’s preliminary application says.

THERE ARE SOME OBVIOUS questions about this approach. Most notably, the planned improvements for Moynihan Station do very little to speed up train service—but the Obama administration has seemed really eager to show progress to that end in its pitch for its high-speed rail plan.

The Paterson administration declined to comment. But based on its preliminary application, officials seem to be hoping that the major aesthetic and symbolic improvements would, when coupled with efficiencies that come from a new platform and better circulation, be justification enough for the federal government. (The project, the state estimates in the application, would boost ridership by 5 percent.)

Never a project short on support from the civics, the new, more incremental approach has already won plaudits from those familiar with it, and many have signed a letter supporting the stimulus application.

“This comes back to the vision that Senator Moynihan had in the first place,” said Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy. “It’s important that the public understand that this isn’t dead—that there is still a chance to do this, and that this is really crucial,” she added. “It’s going to improve everyone’s experience coming into and out of the city.”

But the ball, of course, is headed to the Obama administration’s court, where the city will soon find out just how its interests stack up.

ebrown@observer.com

The trip comes at a time when the effectiveness of the stimulus money is coming into question, and Biden is the man in front of the issue. He will speak at Shenendehowa High School, a suburban district that used stimulus money to blunt proposed roughly $2 million worth of cuts between the proposed budget and the adopted budget. (Full disclosure: I'm a Shenendehowa alum.)

Biden will appear with Representative Scott Murphy, a Democrat who was elected in the district encompassing Clifton Park and who campaigned heavily by drawing a contrast between his pledge to support the stimulus package, and his opponent Jim Tedisco's initial refusal to say how he would have voted, and eventual opposition to the bill.

Murphy even visited Shenendehowa during the campaign to make this point, and Biden cut a radio ad for Murphy in the final week of the runoff.

Since taking office, Murphy has supported Obama and Biden's legislative agenda, including his recent vote in favor of the climate change bill.

Specific projects weren’t detailed, but generally, the money has been allocated toward road paving, bridge repairs, and some larger transit projects in New York City.

Of course, there’s a number of steps to go through before money is actually spent on infrastructure, and the numbers for other categories show a bit more movement. For instance, $1.3 billion in stimulus money is associated with projects that have been put out to bid, and $164 million is linked to projects that are under contract.

This illustrates one of the concerns some had with relying on infrastructure projects for economic stimulus: even though cities and states can rapidly point to projects like bridge repairs and even quickly award contracts, the bulk of the money doesn’t hit the streets (in the hands of laborers) for quite a while, as some of these jobs take multiple years (an example: the Fulton Street Transit Center, which is getting $424 million in stimulus funds, isn’t slated to be finished until 2014).

New York doesn’t seem to be particularly extreme in this case. A number of states are listed as having spent more thus far (Iowa, $16.7 million; New Jersey, $20.8 million), but most have spent less.

ebrown@observer.com

“The number of jobs in America’s emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007… Pew found that jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007.  There was a similar pattern at the state level, where job growth in the clean energy economy outperformed overall job growth in 38 states and the District of Columbia during the same period....This promising sector is poised to expand significantly, driven by increasing consumer demand, venture capital infusions, and federal and state policy reforms.”

The Pew study carefully defines green jobs to include employment in: “(1) Clean Energy, (2) Energy Efficiency, (3) Environmentally Friendly Production, (4) Conservation and Pollution Mitigation, and (5) Training and Support.”  This is an important and methodologically sound study and Pew is to be congratulated for a thorough and creative piece of policy analysis.  (O.K., the professor in me is enough of a wonk to get a little thrilled by the quality of this work… what can I say?).

I am seeing increasing signs of the mainstreaming of green business and its move out of public relations and green washing into the world of hard-headed, realistic business practice. As performance measurement systems have become ubiquitous within organizations, management has focused on reporting cycles that include quarterly, monthly, weekly and even daily reports. This focus on the present creates an organizational culture and environment that makes it very difficult for the issue of long term sustainability to be taken seriously. However, we are starting to see the notion of sustainability added to the definition of effective management. Organizations seek to maintain themselves. An organization that fails to take into account the long term sustainability of the planet may survive while everything around them dies, but the odds are against them. My view is that healthy organizations depend, more than they think, on a healthy planet.  Organizations have trouble absorbing those long term considerations, but many of the best managed companies are starting to learn how to act sustainably.

It comes down to the issue of waste and the relationship of efficiency to good management.  Why wouldn’t an organization strive to maximize the productive benefit of all of the resources that they have access to?  One way that successful organizations thrive is by keeping the costs of production and service delivery as low as possible without sacrificing quality. If there is a technology that can allow you to use less energy, water or other materials in production, all things being equal, why wouldn’t you use it? The issue is often one of competing capital investments. The funds for reducing waste are the same funds needed to actually produce the product or service you are selling. Shouldn’t the rate of return for sustainability investments be analyzed the same way you would analyze other investments?  The mania for short term financial gain is both the enemy of sustainability and also, as we learned in the recent economic crash, the enemy of a sound economy as well.  This was clearly articulated by Mindy S. Lubber, the President of Ceres, a U.S. coalition of investors and environmental leaders in mid September, 2008:

“The fiscal crisis on Wall Street is a painful lesson in how entire industries can delude themselves into ignoring the most fundamental issues -- in this case, the hidden risks from easy sub-prime mortgages. It also reveals the vast pitfalls of an economic system obsessed with short-term gains and growth at all costs while ignoring essentials such as building long-term shareholder value and protecting the future of the planet. As we confront global climate change -- perhaps the biggest challenge mankind has ever faced -- business and government leaders have an opportunity to learn from the ongoing Wall Street debacle and get it right.”

I often hear arguments about the relative role of government and the private sector in building a green economy. This is more of the same old tired debate about socialism vs. capitalism. At the risk of stating the obvious, let me reiterate: The war between the commies and the capitalists is over…. And the winner is…. both. We need government to encourage "green" practices with regulation and incentives, and; we need the private sector to actually do the work of building the green economy.  The Pew study indicates that over the past decade the green economy has grown faster than the rest of the economy. The Obama recovery strategy is built on the idea of using government funds to accelerate that growth. It makes sense to me.