Veterans Legacy Grants Program Improvements

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS <CFR>38 CFR Part 38</CFR> <RIN>RIN 2900-AS13</RIN> <SUBJECT>Veterans Legacy Grants Program Improvements</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Veterans Affairs. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) proposes to amend its Veterans Legacy Grants Program (VLGP) regulations to align them with regulatory updates to the uniform administrative requirements and other requirements for Federal awards and makes additional revisions to improve the process for administration of the grant program. This rulemaking proposes housekeeping amendments to key terms, legal citations, and definitions and extends timelines for reporting and other grant recipient requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before October 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Except as provided below, comments received before the close of the comment period will be available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> for public viewing, inspection, or copying, including any personally identifiable or confidential business information that is included in a comment. We post the comments received before the close of the comment period on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> as soon as possible after they have been received. VA will not post on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> public comments that make threats to individuals or institutions or suggest that the commenter will take actions to harm an individual. VA encourages individuals not to submit duplicative comments; however, we will post comments from multiple unique commenters even if the content is identical or nearly identical to other comments. Any public comment received after the comment period's closing date is considered late and will not be considered in the final rulemaking. In accordance with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023, a 100 word Plain-Language Summary of this proposed rule is available at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , under RIN 2900-AS13. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> John Williams, Senior Grants Management Specialist, Veterans Legacy Grants Program, National Cemetery Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, 810 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20420. Telephone: (314) 348-4073 (this is not a toll-free number). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> VA proposes changes to the regulations governing Veterans Legacy grants to make housekeeping and clarifying edits, described below. These revisions would implement various programmatic improvements for applicants. Additionally, in April 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published revisions to Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (also known as the Uniform Guidance at 2 CFR part 200). Current VLGP regulations reference outdated 2 CFR part 200 throughout and in this rulemaking we propose changes to reflect revised sections, where appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Replacing the Term “Notice of Funding Availability” With “Notice of Funding Opportunity”</HD> VA proposes to replace the terms “Notice of Funding Availability” and “NOFA” with “Notice of Funding Opportunity” and “NOFO”, respectively, in 38 CFR 38.715(k) and throughout the VLGP regulations to align them with OMB's use and definition of the term “Notice of funding opportunity” in 2 CFR 200.1 and 200.204. Under the revised definition, the term “NOFO” would be defined as “a formal announcement of the availability of a Federal funding opportunity published in the OMB-designated government-wide website <E T="03">Grants.gov</E> ( <E T="03">http://www.grants.gov</E> ) in accordance with § 38.725 and 2 CFR 200.1 and 200.204.” Consistent with the definition in 2 CFR 200.1, a NOFO would provide information on the award, who is eligible to apply, the evaluation criteria for selection of an awardee, required components of an application, and how to submit the application. This change is intended to reduce the potential for grant recipient confusion due to discrepancies between terminology used in the VLGP regulations and the <E T="03">Grants.gov</E> website. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Replacing the Term “Grantee” With “Recipient”</HD> VA proposes to replace the term “Grantee” with “Recipient” in 38 CFR 38.715(j) and to make similar changes throughout the VLGP regulations where applicable. This change would be consistent with OMB's use of the term “Recipient” as the entity that receives a Federal award directly from a Federal awarding agency. The alignment of these terms is intended to reduce any confusion for the public regarding the VLGP. The definition would clarify that “recipient” does not include a subrecipient or individual that is a beneficiary of the award. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Consolidating the Publication Location of the NOFO</HD> OMB uniform grant guidance requires a funding agency to provide public notice of Federal financial assistance programs. Current 38 CFR 38.725 requires VA to publish funding opportunity announcements in both the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and in <E T="03">Grants.gov.</E> VA proposes to discontinue the requirement in its current regulation to post NOFOs in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Because <E T="03">Grants.gov</E> is an OMB-designated government-wide website and is recognized as the primary Federal system used for publication of notices concerning Federal funding opportunities and financial assistance, see 89 FR 30072 (Apr. 22, 2024), VA proposes to use <E T="03">Grants.gov</E> as the primary source of publication for its funding opportunity announcements. VA believes this change would make the VLGP award procedures more efficient and would eliminate the duplicative publication requirement in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , which may often result in additional processing time. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Updating the Terminology of Additional Factors for Deciding Applications</HD> VA proposes to amend 38 CFR 38.735 (Additional factors for deciding applications) by updating the terminology in the regulation to align it with the terminology and process framework established in 2 CFR part 200. Specifically, VA would amend the heading in 38 CFR 38.735(a) from “Applicant's performance on prior award” to “Applicant's history of performance”. History of performance is a principal factor considered when evaluating an applicant's application. 2 CFR 200.206(b)(2)(iii). VA would revise the description for additional clarity and consistency on this deciding factor. The revised language would state that VA may consider the applicant's record in managing Federal awards, if it is a prior recipient of a Federal award, including timeliness of compliance with applicable reporting requirements and conformance to the terms and conditions of any previous Federal award. The current language is specific to the applicant's noncompliance with requirements and limits the scope of evaluation to past written evaluation reports, memoranda on performance, and completion of prior submissions. The proposed language would expand VA's ability to review and consider a broader scope of relevant conduct that may impact an applicant's evaluative rating under the merit review process. VA proposes to also amend the heading in 38 CFR 38.735(b) from “Applicant's fiscal integrity” to “Applicant's financial stability” to align it with 2 CFR 200.206(b)(2)(i), which includes an applicant's “financial stability” among the principal evaluative factors to consider. In addition, VA proposes to remove the reference to 2 CFR 200.205 within the description, which would provide flexibility for the VLGP regulation if future edits are made to 2 CFR part 200. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Extending the Timeframe for Recipients To Fulfill Reporting Requirements</HD> VA proposes to amend 38 CFR 38.765 (Recipient reporting requirements) to allow 120 calendar days after the end date of the period of performance for a grant recipient to submit a final report. Currently, the regulation only allows for a grant recipient to submit this information no later than 60 days after the last day of the grant period. The amended language would align with the closeout requirements under 2 CFR 200.344 (Closeout) and provide the grant recipient with the standard time period to submit required financial, performance, and other reports after the period of performance has concluded. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes to Authority Citations</HD> VA proposes to revise authority citations for the VLGP regulations. VA proposes to revise the authority citation for § 38.715 by removing the reference to 2 CFR 200.203, which governs the requirement to provide public notice of Federal financial assistance programs, and adding in its place a reference to 2 CFR 200.1, which defines the term “notice of funding opportunity,” and 2 CFR 200.204, which sets forth requirements of notices of funding opportunities. VA proposes to revise the authority citation for § 38.725 by removing the reference to 2 CFR 200.203 and adding in its place a reference to 2 CFR 200.204. VA also proposes to revise the authority citation for § 38.730 by removing the reference to 2 CFR 200.203 and adding a reference to 2 CFR 200.208, which sets forth specific conditions for federal grant awards. VA proposes to revise the authority citation for § 38.735 by removing the reference to 2 CFR 200.203 and adding a reference to 2 CFR 200.206, which provides that the Federal awarding agency will review risk posed by applicants. VA proposes to revise the authority citation for § 38.740 by removing the reference to 2 CFR 200.203 and adding a reference to 2 CFR 200.205, which prov ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━