Good day commission colleagues:

Thank you all for a terrific conference last week. We covered a lot of ground, and your active participation kept things lively and engaging. We’re working this week to get all of the conference materials associated with the presentations together so that we can make them available to you. I’ll send a message to you when they’re ready with instructions on how to access the information. In the meantime, we’d like to address a separate issue related to this year’s Administrative grants.

As you know, we are still under a continuing resolution (CR) and we will not be able to carry unexpended funds from 2008 into 2009. We must award all funds this year. We anticipate the next CR passing at the end of this week so we can begin to award your Administrative grants next week. We willpro-rate the awardsbased onthe next CR as we have done sometimes in the past. The award process will be as follows:

• We will award half of your requested Admin allocation,beginning next week.
      
• We will award the remainder of your grant after we have a final appropriation (hopefully by February) and after we have reviewedyour 2007 Administrative grant FSR which is due on January 31, 2008. We will adjust your 2008 awards for unexpended 2007 funds still available to you.
      
• After we have an appropriation, we will issue the allocation chart for 2008 and work with you to amend your grant for the balance of your allocation. That 2008 chart will include any excess ’08 funds available based on adjustments we will make for 2007 unexpended funds. Given the minimum and maximum amount limits on the administrative grants and due to the Corporation's new environment of one-year funding, any excess funds available will go to the states above the minimum and below the maximum allocations. We will work with those states to amend current budgets as needed for these additional funds. One caution:We anticipatea flat appropriation in 2009, and we will not have the benefit of ’08 carry-over to supplement it. Therefore, you should budget these additional funds forone-time activities that will not require funds in 2009.

There is nothing more that you need to submit at this time in reference to your Admin grant. Please note that this process means that compliance with the due date for your FSR is of even greater importance since it will directly impact the timing of awarding the remainder of your Admin grant.