City council President Eric Garcetti has called for an investigation to determine why the City of Los Angeles has not enjoyed the same success as other Southern California municipalities in securing federal stimulus funds, saying that leaders at other cities around the country have told him that "L.A. policymakers really dropped the ball."

While the city has received $412 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding, less than 25 percent has come from competitive grant applications. One billion dollars worth of applications have resulted in less than $100 million of awards. Although the money is creating more than 7,073 jobs, the City of Los Angeles has been unsuccessful in acquiring funding for about 10,000 more jobs.

The city's Department of Water and Power lost out on $200 million to develop a smart-grid energy system and the Port of Los Angeles was denied about $36 million in competitive project grants. At the same time, various cities, school districts, colleges and other groups in Los Angeles County were awarded about $138 million in federal grants to get the ball rolling on solar energy projects.

"I think the people of Los Angeles deserve to know when we've done a good job and when some of our proprietaries or others have really dropped the ball, at least compared to our peers around the region," Garcetti said Friday at a meeting of the city council's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Recovery and Reinvestment.

LADWP officials declined interview requests, instead issuing a written statement, saying that they would continue to "vigorously pursue other sources of grants and financial assistance." The $200 million stimulus would have "accelerated" a 10-year, $1 billion program "designed to forecast demand and monitor outages in real time," primarily by installing meters that "improve operating efficiency by directing power to where it's most needed."

Both the Port of LA and LADWP are quasi-governmental agencies with proprietary powers, meaning that though they receive no tax-support, they still contribute to the city's general fund. Each department has a board of commissioners--whose members are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council--that make policy.

Jim Clarke, the mayor's director for federal relations, said the autonomy of city departments has led to a decentralized approach to finding, applying for and managing grants. Even though this has been problematic, departments directly overseen by the city have had a lack of success with grants too.

After applying for $27 million out of $300 million available for petroleum reduction projects, the city received nothing.

Clarke said departments prepare grants independently with different degrees of outside consultation. He knows how the city can begin to improve its fragmented approach, but the city's budget crisis prevents the immediate creation of a single department to handle grants.

"We want a group of dedicated officials really finding and tracking grants, and then figuring out a strategy to make a compelling argument for winning those grants," he said. "There's much more we could do up front. ARRA funding has brought to our attention that the city needs to have a more centralized system, and we are in the process of finding out what the best practices are."

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, CleanTECH San Diego, a nonprofit agency, led San Diego County's application process with the assistance of University of California, San Diego researchers. Taking advantage of the fact that the Internal Revenue Service would consider the smallest funding requests first, the group split the county's requests into 300 different applications. In the end, San Diego received $154.6 million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, about 20 percent of the $800 million awarded for solar energy projects.

Clarke said coordination and collaboration could be advantageous in fighting for grants.

"One of the suppositions about the [competitive project] grants is that if we can show collaboration, it proves the project has wider appeal and makes it more attractive for funding," he said. While 100 applications were granted for $3.4 billion in energy efficiency funding, 300 requests, including LADWP's for a maximum $200 million allotment, were rejected by the Department of Energy. San Diego Gas and Electric received about $28 million, which will fund nearly half of a project to improve wireless communications of its smart-grid.

Clarke said that the city manager of Burbank, which like the City of Glendale received $20 million to install smart meters, told him that his office has been coordinating all grant applications. Although small, the centralized operation has shown returns.

Garcetti has called on his committee as well as the city controller's office and mayor's office to study why grant applications are being rebuffed. At Friday's meeting, he said that certain groups have not fared as well as others in securing federal funds, specifically mentioning the smart-grid funds, an electric vehicle grant that brought the South Coast Air Quality Management District $45.4 million and port truck funding from which the Port of L.A. earned just under $2 million.

"(The committee) hears bad news and we say Washington must have screwed us over again, and yet, sometimes we're doing it to ourselves," he said. "I want us to find some of those best cases and do some forensic auditing on that and see what's missing on [those applications]."

Believing that there has been no technical issues with forms and deadlines, Clarke said he has asked federal officials for a detailed report of why Los Angeles' applications have been denied.

"It seems odd and peculiar to us because the utilities around us received funds," he said. "Maybe, the amount we were asking for wasn't in the ballpark of what they were looking for. If so, we need to know that."

The news for LADWP has not all been grim. The utility received $31.6 million in interest-free energy bonds, which according to Carol Tucker of LADWP's Public Affairs Division, will cover 70 percent of the projected cost of adding 10 turbines to the Pine Tree Wind Power Plant in the Mojave Desert. DWP's Board of Commissioners approved the expansion in June, and the new 1.5 megawatt turbines are expected to go online in June 2010.

LADWP also expects the Department of Energy to announce by the end of the year its decision regarding $615 million nationally available for smart-grid demonstration project grants.

Meanwhile, Clarke said the city should learn before January about its share of $100 million in Neighborhood Stabilization grants as well results of requests for funding under the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program. He added that the TIGER funds will be very competitive, with groups around the country submitting 1400 applications for projects worth $57 billion, far more than $1.5 billion pool of grant money actually available.

"We know there's a big demand for these federal grants, and we're doing the best we can to not miss out on any opportunities," he said. "We appreciate the opportunity to know what we are doing well and what we are not."