FTA Supplemental Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 Apportionments, Allocations, and Program Information |
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Therese McMillan
Federal Transit Administration
July 23, 2015
[Federal Register Volume 80, Number 141 (Thursday, July 23, 2015)]
[Notices]
[Pages 43832-43833]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2015-18062]
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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Federal Transit Administration
FTA Supplemental Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 Apportionments,
Allocations, and Program Information
AGENCY: Federal Transit Administration (FTA), DOT.
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) annually publishes
one or more notices to apportion funds appropriated by law. If less
than a full year of funds is available, FTA may publish multiple
partial apportionment notices. This notice is the second notice
announcing a partial apportionment for programs funded with Fiscal Year
(FY) 2015 contract authority.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For general information about this
notice contact Kimberly Sledge, Acting Director, Office of Transit
Programs, at (202) 366-2053. Please contact the appropriate FTA
regional office for any specific requests for information or technical
assistance. A list of FTA regional offices and contact information is
available on the FTA Web site at http://www.fta.dot.gov.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Overview
FTA's public transportation assistance program authorization, the
Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), expired
September 30, 2014. Since that time, Congress has enacted short-term
extensions allowing FTA to continue its current programs. The most
recent extension, the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2015,
Public Law 114-21, (May 29, 2015) continues FTA's transit assistance
programs through July 31, 2015.
More specifically, it extends contract authority for the Formula
and Bus Grants programs at approximately 83 percent of the FY 2015
levels until July 31, 2015.
FTA's full-year appropriations, the Consolidated and Further
Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, Public Law 113-235 (Dec. 16,
2014), hereinafter ``Appropriations Act, 2015'' was enacted in
December, 2014, giving FTA appropriated resources for all of FY 2015
for Administrative Expenses, Capital Investment Grants, Research
programs, and grants to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation
Authority. The Appropriations Act, 2015 also provides a full fiscal
year obligation limitation on contract authority made available to FTA
programs funded from the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund
during this fiscal year.
On February 9, 2015, FTA published an apportionments notice that
apportioned approximately 8/12ths of the FY 2015 authorized contract
authority among potential program recipients based on contract
authority that was available from October 1, 2015 through May 31, 2015
(80 FR 7254). That notice also provided relevant information about the
FY 2015 funding available, program requirements, period of
availability, prior year unobligated balances, and other related
program information and highlights. A copy of that notice and
accompanying tables can be found on the FTA Web site at http://www.fta.dot.gov/apportionments.
This document provides notice to stakeholders that FTA is
apportioning the available FY 2015 authorized contract authority--
October 1, 2014 through July 31, 2015--among potential program
recipients according to statutory formulas in 49 U.S.C. Chapter 53.
This document also allocates the remainder of Capital Investment Grant
funding to projects. FTA has posted tables displaying the funds
available to eligible states and urbanized areas on FTA's Web site at
http://www.fta.dot.gov/apportionments. FTA will issue a supplemental
notice at a later date when additional contract authority becomes
available.
The formula apportionment tables that allocate approximately 83
percent of FY 2015 appropriated funds can be found at http://www.fta.dot.gov/apportionments. In addition, the National Transit
Database (NTD) and Census Data used in the funding formulas can be
found at http://www.fta.dot.gov/apportionments. FTA's tables include
the following revisions to incorporate updated NTD data or to correct
for errors incurred in the tables published on February 9, 2015:
A. The Small Transit Intensive Cities (STIC) calculations include
updated NTD data that includes an additional STIC factor for the
Flagstaff Urbanized Area.
B. The Tribal Transit Formula calculations include updated NTD data
that has a revised vehicle revenue miles amount for the Southern Ute
tribe.
C. The Section 5307 Urbanized Area Formula calculations have been
updated to correct for STIC funding allocated to urbanized areas
spanning multiple states where STIC funds were incorrectly attributed
to the respective states.
D. The Section 5337 State of Good Repair High Intensity Fixed
Guideway Tier calculations have been updated to
[[Page 43833]]
correct for an error in the NTD data used in the February 9 table. That
table used data on Directional Route Miles (DRM) that was used in the
FY 2014 apportionment calculations. NTD data is updated annually and
the supplemental apportionment table uses the DRM associated with the
FY 2015 apportionments.
Stakeholders with questions or those who are seeking additional
information on these corrections can contact David Schneider with FTA's
Division of Grants Management at 202-493-0175.
II. Grant Management and Application Procedures
A. The Transportation Electronic Awards Management (TEAM) system
will close on Friday, September 25, 2015. Grants and cooperative
agreements must have all applicable assurances and certifications
completed so that funds can be awarded by the deadline. Funding that
has not been awarded in an application by September 25, 2015 will not
be migrated into the new FTA financial system, TrAMS. Instead, these
applications will need to be re-created when TrAMS deploys in FY 2016.
This applies to new applications as well as amendments to existing
awards.
B. In an effort to streamline grant processing, assuming the full
year 2015 budget level will become available, grantees may now create
an application using an estimated full FY 2015 amount with the
appropriate scopes and activity line items when developing project
budgets. The project budget should reflect the precise activities for
which the grant funds will be used. FTA will then send grants to the
Department of Labor (DOL) for certification of the use of the estimated
full year funds. FTA will then make a grant based on the funding
currently available. Subsequently, when additional funding becomes
available, grantees can amend grants and FTA will send the amended
grants to DOL for information only, since the grantee previously will
have received a certification. For additional grant application
procedures please see section V.F. of the FY 2015 Apportionments notice
published in the Federal Register at http://www.fta.dot.gov/apportionments.
C. Recipients of open American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
grants should be aware that, as a matter of law, all remaining ARRA
funds MUST be disbursed from grants by the end of the 5th fiscal year
(FY) after funds were required to be obligated. (SEE 31 U.S.C. 1552.)
For FTA ARRA projects, that requirement takes affect at the end of FY
2015. Accordingly, once FTA's ECHO grant payment system closes for
disbursements on September 25, 2015, all remaining funds within FTA
ARRA funded grants will no longer be available to the grantee and will
be deobligated from the grant and returned to the U.S. Treasury. Even
if a grantee has incurred costs or disbursed funds prior to the close
of ECHO, if the grantee has not actually drawn down the funds by 2:00
p.m. EDT on September 25, 2015 FTA would be unable to reimburse the
grantee. Therefore, grantees with open ARRA grants must ensure project
activities are completed and all funds are drawdown before by 2:00 p.m.
EDT on September 25, 2015. For ARRA TIGER 1 projects, the same
requirement will be in effect for the end of FY 2016.
Therese McMillan,
Acting Administrator.
[FR Doc. 2015-18062 Filed 7-22-15; 8:45 am]
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