Indiana’s largest recipient of stimulus funds to make low-income homes more energy-efficient had completed less than 8 percent of its assignment by a halfway point last month.

The state agency that oversees the program is considering cutting funding to the Indiana Builders Association, a politically active organization with no experience administering a weatherization program, if its performance doesn’t improve.

The builders association received more than $20.7 million to weatherize 3,334 homes, a move criticized as cronyism on the governor’s part by citizens’ advocates who said the money should have gone to community-action agencies experienced in administering weatherization programs. At its current pace, the association is on track to complete only about a tenth of its remaining 3,000 homes by a May 31 deadline.

The Citizens Action Coalition, which has pointed out that the Indiana Builders Association has been a major contributor to Gov. Mitch Daniels’ gubernatorial campaign, has called for the state to shift the money back to established programs if the association can’t come through by the end of May.

Nine agencies statewide – all community-action agencies – met or exceeded the goal of having half their job done by a Feb. 28 halfway-point benchmark.

Ten agencies, including the Indiana Builders Association, had completed less than a quarter of their work by the halfway point.

The Indiana Builders Association is responsible for weatherizing homes in 38 counties, including DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, Steuben and Wells. The nine other agencies that had completed less than a quarter of the work are responsible for 660 homes in Bartholomew, Clay, Clinton, Elkhart, Jay, Johnson, Marion, Putnam, Randolph, Shelby, St. Joseph and Tippecanoe counties.

Indiana received nearly $132 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to weatherize more than 30,000 households. The first year of the program, which runs through 2012, ends May 31.

Monitoring the progress in Indiana is the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority, whose director said Friday that great strides are being made daily by the lagging agencies in catching up.

Although Indiana was the 49th state approved for the funds, its program has been held up as a model by the U.S. Department of Energy, and the state ranks 10th in the nation in total units completed, executive director Sherry Seiwert said.

“We feel very good and confident about the progress we made on the program,” she said. “We’re trending well.”

To keep performance high, the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority is considering reallocating current funds from underperforming agencies, but no decisions have been made, she said.

Indiana’s program has generated or retained the equivalent of 258 full-time jobs toward its goal of 2,000 by 2012 and has trained more than 1,700 contractors, she said.

Since the first of the year, Indiana has been averaging 21 home completions a day – one in five of those by the Indiana Builders Association.

Whether that pace will ensure the Indiana Builders Association’s and other lower-performing agencies’ continued participation in the program remains to be seen. In June, a second round of funding of about $70 million will begin – an increase from the $50 million doled out in the program’s first year.

Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority’s Paul Krievins, the state’s Low-Income Weatherization Program administrator, said the authority’s staff will spend the next two months evaluating the performance of the agencies currently performing weatherization. In addition to facing reallocation of their current funds, Krievins said those that don’t meet goals will have to show how they can do better or they may not receive future stimulus dollars.

Indiana Builders Association CEO Rick Wajda said the state expected that his organization would need time to build its program from scratch, and that it’s just now hitting its stride.

As of Friday, the number of homes the Indiana Builders Association has completed is at 12 percent, an increase of 145 homes since the Feb. 28 reporting date, he said. That leaves nearly 3,000 homes to be weatherized in about two months.

“Our goal all along was to see this program through,” he said. “We think we’ve put a pretty good program in place.”

Fort Wayne-based Community Action of Northeast Indiana had completed 44 percent of its assigned 357 homes by Feb. 28. Pam Brookshire, CANI director of program operations, said the agency solicited more contractors at the start of the year, which will help it catch up before May 31.

“We’re running behind, but we’re making good progress,” she said. “We should make it.”

Even agencies with experience in weatherization programs have found implementing this one difficult. Community and Family Services Inc. received more than $1.4 million to weatherize 227 homes in Adams, Jay and Randolph counties.

The community-action agency already had an in-house weatherization program in place that handled about 140 homes a year, said Brian Shaneyfelt, federal weatherization coordinator.

Because the in-house weatherization team couldn’t handle the increased number of jobs, Shaneyfelt said his agency cast a wide net looking for contractors to take on the work. But it didn’t get the anticipated response, because weatherization work is highly technical and requires expensive equipment many general contractors don’t have.

Even so, Shaneyfelt said his agency has a solid program that has picked up the pace.

“With any pilot program, you’re going to have a lot of stumbles and hurdles to go over,” he said. “But all in all, we’re pretty confident about what we’re going to be able to do.”

aturner@jg.net