Congressman Michael Capuano, D-Mass., today urged state governments to reduce environmental and bidding rules to speed the implementation of federal stimulus dollars.

"We’re in a crisis," Capuano said this morning at a NAIOP forum in Boston. "I understand that if three wild geese have to die in the Mystic River to get Assembly Square (a major development project in Somerville) moving, I’m sorry for those geese, but we have to get moving."

In his address, Capuano faulted several aspects of the federal stimulus bill passed earlier this year, taking on the inclusion of tax cuts in the bill and some of its so-called "use it or lose it" provisions. He said the speed at which projects had to be ready to go meant a lot of the money was being spent on superficial projects.

"The 120-day requirement [to use federal funds] sounded good, but how many of these projects are really ready to go? It’s a handful at best," Capuano said. "They’re all resurfacing projects so far. There’s no deep construction projects going on. The desire was states would take action to get rid of some of this red tape and get these things out on the street."

Capuano specifically mentioned environmental and bidding regulations. Gov. Deval Patrick recently filed a bill that would temporarily overhaul some of these rules, but it has yet to receive any attention from the Legislature.

Capuano also said the original intent of the stimulus was job creation, but it had been watered down to win votes, many of which never came.

That, combined with fragmented funding mechanisms in the bill, meant that "there’s no place to go where anyone helps piece it all together. And we’re not going to get the bang for the buck that we deserve," Capuano said.

The former Somerville mayor, who recently compared a group of bank executives to a group of Winter Hill bank robbers, took a combative tone in his address. He blamed the economic crisis on "unfettered human greed," asking the roomful of developers, "How many of you said no to a loan with terms that honestly had terms a little better than they should have been? Did any of you ask where [the lenders] were getting the money from? Your job was only to get the money and build something, and God bless you."

Capuano also faulted government inaction and said that without new regulations on the financial system, "we’re doomed to do it all again real soon."