090205: Billions Still Up For Lobbyist Grabs in Fiscal Stimulus

By Jim Snyder and Silla Brush

(The Hill) -- Even at more than 1,000 pages, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act omits a lot of the details. That leaves federal and state officials in many cases to pick and choose how billions of dollars are spent, and on whom.

For lobbyists denied a chance to slip earmarks into the fast-tracked stimulus, the uncertainty provides another opening to position clients or pet causes for a major piece of the action. Much of the money will be distributed through already established formulas, but there are many new accounts where the rules are less clear and billions of dollars are essentially up for grabs.

One tactic to emerge in the race for cash is the "phone mark," a term coined by one lobbyist for a member of Congress pushing federal agency officials to specify certain programs or companies.

Another is the race to position clients to make their best case for the billions of dollars handed out in grants rather than by formula.

"Because the stimulus bill was done in such a rush, a lot of the discretion taken care of in legislation is now put in the hands of the administration," said Craig Silvertooth, executive director of the Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing. "It creates a situation where the Obama administration has unprecedented discretion in how some of this money will be spent."

Silvertooth was eyeing a $4.5 billion pot of cash to make federal buildings more efficient. The bill provided few details about what would qualify. He planned to lobby officials to look at the entire "envelope" of a building and spend money on improving its roofing, windows or insulation, a potential boon to members of his group like Firestone, Dow Chemical and Trimco.

Transit lobbyists, meanwhile, mounted a campaign targeting 13 states to make sure state transportation officials were aware that a $27.5 billion appropriation could be spent not only on new roads and bridges but on inter-city rail programs or bus lines.

Recovery funds should be used to "achieve sustainable transportation results and put people to work," Transportation for America said in a letter last week to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Richard Hamburg of Trust for America's Health was lobbying that some of the $1 billion that went to a wellness and prevention fund would support efforts to improve the food in schools and to promote workplace fitness programs.

"We're talking to anyone who will listen," he said.

With so much uncertainty, some lobbyists are waiting to see lawmakers pitch their own ideas on how agencies should interpret the law, and on how the money should be spent.

"The stimulus turns every member of Congress into a lobbyist in that large chunks of change have now gone over to the agencies with limited policy prescriptions attached to them," said Heather Podesta, of Heather Podesta + Partners. "Everybody has a sense of how that money should be spent. You'll see members of Congress and senators engaged as to what the agencies are doing where their committees have jurisdiction."

Like members of the rank and file on Capitol Hill who largely watched from the sidelines as the process unfolded, some lobbyists were frustrated at how quickly the bill was written and by their relative inability to affect its course.

"If we had a stimulus bill with the normal kind of report language that accompanies bills like these, we would have an idea of where the money was going and to whom," said Keith Kennedy of Baker Donelson.

"The irony is that doing it without earmarks now drives the decisionmaking process into the federal bureaucracy, behind closed doors."

Silvertooth said lobbyists were still trying to feel their way through the process. "It's really fuzzy," he said.

The Office of Management and Budget has tried to fill in some gaps. In a 62-page guide issued to federal agencies the day after President Obama signed the bill into law, OMB laid out a timeline for agencies to draw up plans and post them on agency websites. Agencies are expected by March 3 to start reporting on how the funds are being used and by May 1 to have full plans for how they intend to use and allocate the money.

The process will likely put significant strain on the federal government's contracting workforce, and OMB specifically left open the possibility of its own form of economic stimulus for the federal government: "a large-scale recruitment initiative" for agency officials just to run new acquisitions. On Monday, the White House announced that Vice President Biden would be in charge of oversight of the stimulus package, along with Earl Devaney, the Interior Department's inspector general.

Lobbyists for state and local officials have zeroed in on several accounts for competitive grant funding. For example, of the roughly $4 billion in new money for the Justice Department, some lobbyists are focusing on helping their clients win $225 million in grants for state and local law enforcement and $125 million intended for rural law enforcement.

The stimulus bill also provides more than $4 billion to the Army Corps of Engineers to support new construction projects. "It remains to be seen to what extent the Army Corps is going to be responding to individual requests from individual members," said one lobbyist.

The economic stimulus also appropriated around $1.5 billion to efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which are thought to be a major contributor to global warming. Most of that money will go to programs already under way to pump the carbon underground in "geologic formations." But last-minute lobbying earmarked a "small allocation" of the total pot to "innovative" concepts that reuse carbon to grow biofuels, for example. But it will be up to Energy Department officials, presumably, to determine precisely how much money to spend on those efforts and what programs will qualify as innovative.

Lobbyists at firms like Patton Boggs and the Ferguson Group said they had received hundreds of requests for information on the package, which prompted both firms to sponsor Webinars last week explaining some of its finer points.

"I really think that one thing we can be doing for our clients is just trying to get them ready and in the best place and give them advice on how best to be applying for those funds," said one lobbyist. "Everybody is going to be waiting to see the guidance from the various agencies."

Patton Boggs even put out a 100-plus-page book that lists the programs for which their clients may be eligible.

"The government is picking winners and losers on a micro and macro level," said Darryl Nirenberg, a lobbyist at Patton Boggs.

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