Arizona shutters energy program; remaining workers fired

The five remaining state workers tasked with securing federal grants to assist with energy savings have been fired, and the 40-year-old State Energy Program has been shuttered as of Friday.

Gov. Doug Ducey and his administration have been deconstructing the energy savings and efficiency program since shortly after Ducey took office.

The governor fired Jan Brewer’s director of Governor's Office of Energy Policy, Leisa Brug, in February. In May, Ducey closed the Governor's Office of Energy Policy, laid off six workers and transferred the remaining seven workers to the Department of Administration, where the energy staff was folded into the Office of Grants and Federal Resources.

Five of those employees worked on the State Energy Program and two worked on federal weatherization assistance, which helps low-income residents tap into federal funds for home repairs.

The DOA on Friday transferred the two weatherization workers to the Housing Department, while the five working on the State Energy Program were let go.

“We determined the functions could be better absorbed in existing agencies,” Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said Monday. “It cut down on the overhead of an office with a large staff with money that could have been going to grants going to staffing, and eliminated some of the duplication.”

Scarpinato said the layoffs from Friday were not the governor’s decision, because Ducey hasn’t overseen the energy workers since they moved to the Department of Administration in May.

Department of Administration spokeswoman Megan Rose declined to comment for the agency about the layoffs.

The State Energy Program was created in 1975 and helped state agencies, schools, cities and towns with energy savings and securing federal grants for energy projects.

For example, in 2012, the program won $715,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to help wastewater/water-treatment facilities with energy-efficiency projects. It is unclear whether the entirety of that grant had been spent.

Over the years, the Energy Office directed hundreds of millions of federal dollars into the state for a variety of energy-efficiency projects. That includes more than $115 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that helped pay for facilities upgrades across Arizona municipalities to save taxpayers on municipal energy bills.

The layoffs apparently were unexpected. On Thursday, the day before the employees were let go, Lisa Henderson, the community energy-program manager, sent an e-mail invitation for a Dec. 2 meeting with several energy-conservation contractors. The e-mail was shared with The Arizona Republic.

Jeff Schlegel, the Arizona representative for the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said the group remains hopeful that the weatherization program remains a priority for the state as those two workers move to the Housing Department.

"That program is super important and brings about $1.2 million (in federal funds) to Arizona a year," he said. "It helps low-income people save energy, which helps them afford their utility bills. ... Our main concern is wherever the weatherization program is, it needs to be well administered and effective to help low-income people."