Governor’s Workshops for Local Leaders

Community Development (CDBG, weatherization funding etc)
- Frank Coakley, DHCD Assistant Secretar

March  4, 2009

Mr. Patoka:  And our last speaker -- and then we'll go into a bit of question and answer or I guess questioning and answering -- is Eric Brenner, Director of the Governor's Grants Office. 

Mr. Brenner:   I know libraries were designed to keep kids quiet and here I am having to speak like I'm yelling at my own high school kids. 

Fortunately we have a big panel, which means everybody covered most of the big projects out there, so my role here usually is to catch the little bits that were missed.  We didn't miss too much tonight. 

A little bit of context.  In a typical year, the State of Maryland, Maryland State Government, receives about 475 Federal grants, that's about $7 billion, and that makes up about a quarter of the State's budget.  This year the number of grants will be virtually unchanged.  But what Congress really tried to do was target existing grant programs.  So pretty much what you heard from the whole panel today -- the money that's coming in -- there are a few new things, but mostly it's programs you should already recognize and the thought was this is the quickest way to get money into the pipeline and out the door. 

Izzy mentioned both transparency and a meeting we came from. The Governor is a big transparency fan, as is the President.  And in keeping with that I'm going to pass out a document -- it was in the corner, most of you didn't see it.  This is our internal piece that we're working with to try to populate the website. 

It's not there yet, but what we've got are approximately the 90 places where we think money is going to come in from this program.  We identified the Federal agency, we identified the State agency that should be getting it, whether it's a competitive or a formula grant.  This will all be on the website shortly but there didn't seem to be any reason to hide it, other than it's not the typical nice glossy document that State Government hands out.

In most cases the grants start by going from the Federal to the State government and then we pass them on.  There are a  few particular items that go directly to local governments.  Housing touched on a couple of things that will be directly to the locals. 

I'm going to hit just a couple that aren't here.  There's nobody here from the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.  They do a lot of the job training work.  There are four main grant programs that bring in job training money.  The way most of that will filter out is to the local Workforce Investment Boards,  the one-stops.  It's a really big increase in funds.   So if anyone is interested in a workforce type of program, whether you're a local government, nonprofit, your local WIBs are going to have a lot of money with quite a bit of discretion coming up very soon. 

Criminal justice issues weren't discussed.  There's two, three programs you'd probably  be interested in.  There's a COPS program.  This is Clinton-era, you can apply for money for police forces.  The local police forces typically will be the ones that apply, that's been resurrected, that will be directed at locals and the money won't stop at the states first.

There's also a Fire Act Training Grant Program.  We've got Bart Kennedy from Senator Mikulski's office who is an expert on this.  We do a lot of trainings because already local fire and rescue squads under the current system apply for this money.   Now there's a lot of new money and including a loosening of some of the rules around construction type activities.  So that's something that's directly out to the locals. 

Byrne Grants.  A lot of the money that comes from the State through our Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, GOCCP.  It's Federal money they get and move out.  The Byrne grant money was increased considerably and that department, a lot of that money will be moved through, through the competitive process that they're used to doing.  Really a bunch of interesting programs and that program has been shrinking the last couple years.  So those familiar with the Byrne grants should be happy to see a bump, even if it's only for 18 months. 

Not sure if we have any people from universities here, but a lot of the biggest competitive research grants will come directly from a whole alphabet soup of acronyms; National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, NOAA, which will be doing a lot of climate change types of grant programs, agriculture. 

Typically, an organization trying to bust into those places for money the first time is going to struggle.  But if you're an organization that's had money in those places before, it's a great time to make them go deeper into their list and accept programs. 

For Hopkins, for University of Maryland in particular, they're very excited.  But other universities can compete here and we're going to do our best with Maryland's higher education commission to make sure people know about the opportunities that are out there. 

We got energy, we got most of the other pieces I used to cover. 

I'm going to re-emphasize one last piece that Hannah talked about in DBED.  This whole bill, $800 billion is a lot of money, and most of what we've talked about tonight is the $250 billion that's going out in grant programs all across the country.   There's also $300 million in tax code changes and we didn't touch on a single tax issue tonight.  So just so you know, that's something we didn't pretend to catch coming through other ways. 

But the last piece, there's $250 billion that will go directly from Federal agencies through contracts to do things like weatherize Federal buildings, to do things like add construction at NIH here in Baltimore at the SSA, the Medicaid /Medicare headquarters.  Huge amounts of money for new IT projects and construction. 

And again I try not to say this if I'm talking to broader audiences, but this is great for Maryland.  The D.C./Baltimore corridor already does well historically from Federal funds, but  to see the contract work that's going to be coming here is a terrific opportunity.  And, if anything, DBED and all of us have to work together to keep people from outside the State coming in to do this work.  There's already been considerable interest in doing that.  But that's where a lot of the money will come through.

And even if you happen to live in a region that doesn't have these Federal contracts, the mere fact that we're getting jobs here helps our tax numbers.  If you live on the Eastern Shore and you see a project going up in suburban D.C., that's still good because that's still tax funds coming into the State and it helps support all the other programs you depend on.

I'll be here afterwards, you can contact me through our website if you have any other questions.  And now is our however many minutes for the whole panel. 

Mr. Patoka:  Thanks very much, Eric.  (Applause.)  We're going to take a  few questions.

 

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