Veteran and Spouse Transitional Assistance Grant Program

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS <CFR>38 CFR Part 80</CFR> <RIN>RIN 2900-AR68</RIN> <SUBJECT>Veteran and Spouse Transitional Assistance Grant Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Veterans Affairs. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is implementing provisions in the Johnny Isakson and David P. Roe, M.D. Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act to establish the Veteran and Spouse Transitional Assistance Grant Program (VSTAGP). This final rule addresses general grant application procedures and requirements to apply for VSTAGP grant funding and adopts the proposed rule with some corrections and clarifying changes. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective June 12, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Lillian Miesemer, Senior Management and Program Analyst, Outreach, Transition and Economic Development, Veterans Benefits Administration, 1800 G Street SW, Washington, DC 20006; 202-461-9558 (this is not a toll-free telephone number). If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) or a text telephone (TTY), call the Federal Relay Service (FRS) toll-free at 1-800-877-8339. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On July 5, 2023, VA published a proposed rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (88 FR 42891) that would establish the VSTAGP program in 38 CFR 80.1 through 80.17 pursuant to section 4304 of Public Law 116-315, the <E T="03">Johnny Isakson and David P. Roe, M.D. Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2020,</E> which was enacted on January 5, 2021. VA provided a 30-day comment period, which ended on August 4, 2023. VA received four comments on the proposed rule. One of the four comments was strongly in favor of the rule. We thank the commenter for their support and do not make any changes based on that comment. The second of the four comments suggested grant recipients must have access to separating Service members and recently separated Service members. More specifically, the commenter advocated in favor of a means by which grant recipients can identify the geographical areas where separating Service members have relocated. Additionally, the commenter suggested that the Department of Defense (DoD) and VA should collaborate to encourage those enrolled in the DoD Transition Assistance Program (TAP) to take advantage of opportunities provided by recipients of grants under VA's VSTAGP program. As noted in the proposed rule, a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) will be posted at <E T="03">Grants.gov</E> ( <E T="03">https://www.grants.gov</E> ) in accordance with § 80.4 of the proposed rule. The NOFO will require applicants for grant funding to submit proposals addressing detailed outreach strategies appropriate and tailored to the specific service delivery area served by the applicant. To meet this requirement, VA will recommend in the NOFO that applicants conduct an environmental scan as a component or means of strategic planning to gather information about available supports and services within the proposed geographic area to be served. Furthermore, the NOFO will require applicants for grant funding to demonstrate how their proposed program will promote active outreach to, recruitment of, and engagement with former members of the U.S. Armed Forces who are separated, retired, or discharged, as well as their spouses. Applicants for grant funding must design, develop, and execute program promotion and awareness activities as a part of their outreach. The NOFO will require applicants for grant funding to submit proposals explaining how their program will reach out to potentially eligible individuals, and how they will collaborate with local entities that may serve former members of the U.S. Armed Forces as well as their spouses ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> local military bases, VA Regional Offices, Veterans Service Organizations (VSO), faith-based organizations, social service agencies, community-based clinics, other job-training organizations), within their proposed geographic service delivery area to introduce the program to eligible participants. VA will encourage applicants to reach out to unique sub-groups of veterans and/or spouses who are likely experiencing inequitable access to jobs, job training programs, and/or other employment services in the proposed service area. Thus, VA will not be providing information regarding the geographical areas where separating Service members have relocated. Grant applicants will have to design, develop, and execute program promotion and awareness activities as part of their proposal, to include strategies for reaching the relevant population within their proposed geographic service delivery area. VA has no specific plans to address opportunities provided by VSTAGP grant recipients as part of the TAP curriculum but, as noted above, intends that grant applicants will be responsible for developing strategies for promotion and awareness of such services. In any event, the comments relating to how applicants are supposed to identify certain areas or populations to serve, as well as the comments relating to encouraging TAP participants to take advantage of opportunities resulting from VSTAGP grants, are beyond the scope of the rulemaking. We do not make any changes based on these comments. The third and fourth comments were supportive of the proposed rule. The comments advocated for widespread accessibility of applications and establishment of clear evaluation criteria. VA agrees with both comments. To address the comment regarding the accessibility of applications, as required in § 80.4 of the proposed rule, and in accordance with 2 CFR 200.204, VA will publish a NOFO at <E T="03">Grants.gov</E> ( <E T="03">https://www.grants.gov</E> ). The NOFO will provide clear application procedures including detailed guidance and resources to help applicants apply for funding and navigate the application process. Additionally, to address the comment regarding clear application criteria the NOFO will include detailed scoring criteria as required in § 80.7, with clearly identified point values for each evaluation criterion. VA will establish procedures to assess the technical merit of applications to ensure an objective review of applications. The NOFO will contain information regarding the evaluative criteria that will be used by the review panel to evaluate submitted applications to help applicants understand the standards against which an application will be scored. VA will execute a merit review process for all responsive applications, with the objective of selecting recipients most likely to be successful in delivering results based on the program objectives. See 2 CFR 200.205. This will ensure that: (1) applicants for grant funding have the opportunity to submit proposals responsive to the solicitation, and (2) the application review process is clear and transparent to applicants. Applicants will be able to view all application requirements in the NOFO once published to <E T="03">Grants.gov</E> ( <E T="03">https://www.grants.gov</E> ). We do not make any changes based on these comments. VA is clarifying the definition of the term “institution of higher education (IHE),” as that term was defined in § 80.2(f) of the proposed rule as one of the various listed entities that would be eligible to receive a VSTAGP grant. In the proposed rule, VA had defined the term “IHE” in a general manner that referred to certain “public or private educational institution[s].” In the final rule, VA is clarifying that private educational institutions must be nonprofit. Specifically, VA adopts the established definition of IHE specified in 20 U.S.C. 1001 (“General definition of institution of higher education”), which provides that, to qualify, an educational institution must be “a public or other nonprofit institution,” <E T="03">id.</E> 1001(a)(4); <E T="03">see id.</E> 1001(b)(1). Clarifying that “IHE” refers to only public or other nonprofit educational institutions ensures that the IHE definition is aligned with the definitions of other possible grant recipients, which include government entities, nonprofit organizations, and nonprofit faith-based organizations. VA believes that applying standards to IHEs that are similar to those applied to other possible grant recipients will promote greater consistency in carrying out the purposes of this grant program in different locations nationwide. In the heading for new part 80 and in § 80.1, we are correcting the erroneous reference to “Veteran Transitional Assistance Grant Program” in the proposed rule to “Veteran and Spouse Transitional Assistance Grant Program”. In §§ 80.2(h)(3), 80.7(b), 80.9 and 80.14, we are changing the use of “may” to “will” or “must” to be more definitive in those provisions. In § 80.5, we are also clarifying that there will be a limit of one application per submitting organization serving the same participant population and in the same geographic service area. In the third sentence of § 80.7(b), we are correcting the erroneous reference to “each selection” in the proposed rule to “each criterion”. We also note that the proposed rule included two provisions which we inadvertently did not address in the preamble. In § 80.2(k), we define the term “In-demand industry sector or occupation” because the term is likely to be used in NOFOs. In § 80.3(f), we explain that a grant must be in an amount that does not exceed 50 percent of the amount required by the grantee to provide the required services. We are making technical changes in § 80.12(c) as proposed to remove material that is precatory, informational, or more appropriate for inclusion in the NOFO. We are thus removing the second sentence ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 58k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━