Friday, February 27, 2009

Navigating Recovery.gov

The federal government's recovery.gov website is actually becoming functional for those who want a centralized, sort of searchable site for seeking out projects to bid on. Here's how to do it:

Open the Recovery.gov home page by typing Recovery.gov into your Google search box. When the home page opens you will see a block on the lower right portion of the page headed "State Progress and Resources." Click on that block. Doing this will open a page which has one blue link "Agency Recovery Sites," which will open a list of federal government agencies that already have their own sites listing projects they are building. The same page has a U. S. map. If your state is colored blue on the map, clicking on your state will take you directly to your state's own web site for Recovery Act projects. If your state is still tan, your state site is not yet up and running. I suggest checking back daily to see when it goes up, so you don't miss out on any of the bidding.

Along similar lines, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee just reported out a bill which would require establishment of a single federal website for announcing, applying for and processing all federal government grants. They are trying to eliminate all paper from the process and to put everything on line.

Monday Senators will have a chance to offer amendments to the omnibus appropriation bill passed this week by the House for fiscal 2009, which must be completed by March 6 or the government will run out of cash. Look for a conference committee to be convened mid week after the Senate markup. However, nobody expects the Senate to eliminate any of the 8,330 earmarks costing an estimated $7.7 billion from the legislation.

Finally, if you are in the D.C. area, protest marches expected Monday may spur the federal government to fund a project for converting all of the boilers in the D.C. power generating plant from coal to natural gas. This will provide a lot of jobs to local contractors and tradespeople.

Please use this information to help your construction business participate in the government funded recovery of the economy of our industry.
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