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RALEIGH — Nicole Corbett has seen the announcements and news reports on $132 million in federal tax money flowing to North Carolina to help low-income families like hers cool and heat their homes.

So why, asked the Climax resident and single mother of two, was she being told by a local nonprofit that there was no money to help her beat the summer heat and that officials in Raleigh were to blame?

As it turns out, Corbett is experiencing the business end of two problems, both related to the state’s Weatherization Assistance Program.

The program is run by a small state agency that contracts with regional nonprofits. Those nonprofits inspect homes and then pay to fix insulation and caulking and sometimes to repair and replace broken heating and cooling units.

But the stimulus funding has yet to reach those nonprofits, and their regular source of funds has stopped flowing, meaning that residents like Corbett are left to sweat out the summer.

“I currently have no air conditioning in the home, which makes it difficult for my kids to sleep,” Corbett said. Last winter, half of her house was unheated. Without repairs, her whole house will be without heat when the cold weather comes back.

“We’re getting calls from people who are upset and who can’t understand why we can’t come out and weatherize their house,” said Janice Scarborough, director of Regional Consolidated Services, based in Asheboro. Her nonprofit serves Guilford, Rockingham, Forsyth, Davidson and Randolph counties.

In May, about 100 families were waiting for service from her agency. That list has grown, especially since news stories about stimulus funds for weatherization hit the state’s newspapers.

Normally, Scarborough said, her agency has 18 people on staff to handle a weatherization program that has existed for years. But the group’s annual contract with the state ran out June 30 and has not been renewed.

“We can’t do anything until we have a contract,” she said. With no contract, Scarborough said, she has had to furlough her weatherization workers.

Maria Spaulding, a deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, confirms that new annual contracts have not been issued to any of the regional nonprofits that provide federally funded weatherization services.

That is at least in part because the man who had been running the weatherization program died suddenly from a stroke. Spaulding said it has been difficult to farm out the work he was doing on the stimulus funding and the normal annual contract.

“I sent them a letter telling them to try to do their best to hang on,” Spaulding said of the nonprofits.

Spaulding said she hoped contracts for the program would be issued this month.

But Scarborough said government delays have not only forced her to idle her existing crew but also are keeping her from hiring more staff and buying more materials to handle the increase in workload that’s expected to come with the stimulus funds.

Contracts for weatherization work paid for with stimulus funds are not expected to be issued until Aug. 1, said Cathy Akroyd, a spokesman for North Carolina’s Office of Economic Recovery and Investment, which is overseeing the money.

Although the idea behind stimulus funding is for money to move quickly into the economy, creating jobs and spurring buying, the money also comes with strict oversight requirements. More so than with other federal funds, states are required to keep close tabs on stimulus spending and have been given rigorous guidelines.

“The federal guidelines on this (weatherization money) have been changed three times,” Akroyd said.

North Carolina’s plan for spending the money has been approved only recently and much of the funding is still in Washington, not North Carolina, she said.

“Dealing with the recovery funding is something that people have never had to deal with before,” she said. “We have some very strict directives.”

In the meantime, Corbett is left to wait and hope for what she thought would be “a godsend” for her family.

“I realize I’m not the worst-off person out there, that there are people who are elderly or have medical conditions,” she said. “But we were so close.”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com