Dear Commission colleagues,

As the recent message from the CEO announces, the President signed the omnibus spending bill on 12/27/07. This bill includes the Corporation’s final ’08 appropriation; however, the funds have not yet been apportioned to us. In order to provide you with administrative funds as quickly as possible, we will award your grants in a two-step process. Firstly, beginning today, the Office of Grants Management will award pro-rated amounts of your total anticipated Admin allocation using funds that have already been apportioned to us under the continuing resolution. Secondly, the remainder of your allocations will be awarded to you by mid-March. By that time, we will have received our full appropriation and also your final FSRs for the ’07 Admin grants. We will make adjustments to your final ’08 allocations after deducting for actual unexpended funds reported in your FSRs.

If your full allocation turns out to be higher than what you anticipated when you submitted your budget in November, you will have the opportunity to request the higher amount and adjust your budget accordingly at the time that you receive the final installment of your allocation in March. We will confirm your full allocation with you after we receive the apportionment from our ’08 appropriation. Also, due to our move to one-year funding, we will offer administrative funds that are not requested by commissions to other commissions who request their full allocations, demonstrate the capacity to use additional administrative funds, and are free of outstanding compliance or audit issues that would preclude an award of additional administrative funds.

Sincerely,

Mikel Herrington