[Senate Hearing 118-68]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                         S. Hrg. 118-68

                IMPROVING ACCESS TO FEDERAL GRANTS FOR 
                       UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES

=======================================================================

                                HEARING
                                
	                       BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
               HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS


                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                              MAY 2, 2023

                               __________

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                       Printed for the use of the
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
        
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
52-784 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
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        COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                   GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           RAND PAUL, Kentucky
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire         RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada                  MITT ROMNEY, Utah
ALEX PADILLA, California             RICK SCOTT, Florida
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut      ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas

                   David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
                    Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
            Lena C. Chang, Director of Governmental Affairs
                    James F. Herbert, Riecker Fellow
                    Courtney R. Gibbons, AAAS Fellow
           William E. Henderson III, Minority Staff Director
              Christina N. Salazar, Minority Chief Counsel
                  Andrew J. Hopkins, Minority Counsel
         Kendall B. Tigner, Minority Professional Staff Member
                     Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                   Ashley A. Gonzalez, Hearing Clerk

                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Peters...............................................     1
    Senator Lankford.............................................    11
    Senator Rosen................................................    14
    Senator Ossoff...............................................    17
Prepared statements:
    Senator Peters...............................................    23

                               WITNESSES
                          TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2023

Jeff Arkin, Director, Strategic Issues, U.S. Government 
  Accountability Office..........................................     3
Meagan Elliott, Ph.D., Deputy Chief Financial Officer and 
  Director, Office of Development and Grants, City of Detroit....     5
Matthew Hanson, Associate Managing Director, Witt O'Brien's......     7

                     Alphabetical List of Witnesses

Arkin, Jeff:
    Testimony....................................................     3
    Prepared statement...........................................    25
Elliott, Meagan Ph.D.:
    Testimony....................................................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................    43
Hanson, Matthew:
    Testimony....................................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    49

                                APPENDIX

Statements submitted for the Record:
    Council on Foundations.......................................    52
    Michigan Infrastructure Office...............................    55
    Michigan Nonprofit Association...............................    58
    National Council of Nonprofits...............................    60
    Social Current...............................................    70
    United Philanthropy Forum....................................    76
    Western Governors' Association...............................    78

 
     IMPROVING ACCESS TO FEDERAL GRANTS FOR UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES

                              ----------                              


                          Tuesday, May 2, 2023

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                           Committee on Homeland Security  
                                  and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    Present: Senators Peters [presiding], Hassan, Rosen, 
Ossoff, Blumenthal, Lankford, Scott, and Hawley.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\1\

    Chairman Peters. The Committee will come to order.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the 
Appendix on page 23.
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    Today's hearing will examine how government can update the 
Federal grants process to help improve communities' access to 
critical resources, increase transparency, reduce duplication, 
and streamline the Federal grants process. Each year, Federal 
agencies distribute grants to help communities fund everything 
from workforce training programs and disaster mitigation 
efforts to local fire stations and first responders.
    Last year, the Federal Government awarded over $1 trillion 
dollars in Federal grant money.
    Communities in Michigan, and across the country, rely on 
this funding for essential services and personnel to keep the 
public safe. Communities also count on Federal grants to 
implement and advance groundbreaking initiatives from the 
American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Inflation Reduction Act 
(IRA), and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) 
that have helped communities recover from the pandemic, upgrade 
their infrastructure, and address climate change.
    For example, in my home State of Michigan, the city of 
Detroit will use Federal grant funds to help restore the I-375 
highway to a boulevard, knitting a divided community back 
together, and creating new opportunities for economic 
development in the process. The funding the city received 
through a grant from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) 
will help them complete this project nearly two years earlier 
than expected.
    These types of grants can go a long way toward helping 
communities invest in significant projects and provide critical 
services to their residents. However, many communities, 
especially small and rural communities, face barriers to 
accessing these vital resources.
    Today we will be examining some of those barriers and 
discussing what more the Federal Government can do to ensure 
that every community has the opportunity to apply for and 
receive grant funding.
    Smaller communities often lack the resources to hire grant 
writers or ensure compliance with complicated Federal 
guidelines, missing out on important opportunities that could 
help them better serve the public.
    By ensuring communities have access to funding, we can also 
encourage the fair and efficient distribution of grants to 
States, cities, localities, and organizations with the greatest 
need, not just to those with the greatest capacity.
    While some agencies have successfully implemented 
recommendations to expand access, many stages of the Federal 
grant process remain both fragmented and duplicative.
    For example, more than 50 different Federal agencies 
distribute grants to more than 131,000 recipient organizations 
for more than 1,900 grant programs, each with its own 
application and award process that can be difficult to 
navigate.
    I am working on legislation to increase accessibility to 
Federal grants by simplifying grant announcements, and 
requiring announcements to use plain, easy-to-understand 
language. Other challenges, such as technical setbacks, a lack 
of leadership and coordination, and the burdensome nature of 
the grants application process have prevented communities, from 
accessing Federal grants.
    Information technology (IT) and technical barriers have 
also prevented communities and organizations from accessing 
grants. Many agencies use different grants management software 
systems, leading to confusion, frustration, and wasted time for 
many applicants.
    Recently, the System for Award Management (SAM), the 
governmentwide registration system for Federal funding awards, 
experienced technical issues that adversely affected businesses 
and nonprofits applying for grants.
    Irregular funding cycles also prevent smaller cities and 
local governments from hiring permanent staff, and shortages of 
temporary staff have exacerbated an already insufficient 
workforce, especially in the areas of greatest need.
    These challenges affect organizations and governments 
across the country. In planning for this hearing today, I have 
heard from States, cities, nonprofits and Tribes about the 
importance of having access to Federal grants. Without 
objection, I would like to enter several statements that I have 
here into the record\1\ that will reflect the challenges all of 
these organizations face.
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    \1\ The statements entered into the Record appears in the Appendix 
on page 52.
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    While it is critical that we streamline the Federal grants 
process to promote better access for smaller communities, we 
must do so in a way that ensures the Federal Government 
receives the information it needs to fairly distribute awards, 
and to conduct appropriate oversight.
    As Chairman, I will continue working to address these needs 
and conduct oversight to help eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse 
within the Federal Government.
    Today, I am pleased to welcome our panel of expert 
witnesses who can speak to the challenges and barriers facing 
their communities, and help share some ideas for how we can 
improve this Federal programs.
    It is the practice of the Homeland Security and Government 
Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses, so if each of 
you will please stand and raise your right hand.
    Do you swear the testimony you will give before this 
Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth, so help you, God?
    Mr. Arkin. I do.
    Ms. Elliott. I do.
    Mr. Hanson. I do.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Today our first witness is Jeff Arkin, Director of 
Strategic Issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). 
Mr. Arkin's expertise includes work on the Federal Government 
and State and local fiscal issues, specifically the 
congressional budget process, Federal agency budget 
formulation, fees for Federal services, and grants between the 
Federal Government and State and local governments.
    Mr. Arkin, welcome. Welcome to the Committee. You may 
proceed with your opening remarks.

 TESTIMONY OF JEFF ARKIN,\1\ DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC ISSUES, U.S. 
                GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

    Mr. Arkin. Chairman Peters, Members of the Committee, thank 
you for having me here today to talk about grants management.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Arkin appears in the Appendix on 
page 25.
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    Federal grants play an important role in funding our 
national priorities, most recently including the Coronavirus 
Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the Federal Government's 
response to it. At the same time, Federal grants represent a 
substantial financial commitment. In fiscal year (FY) 2022, the 
Federal Government provided about $1.2 trillion in assistance 
to State, local, Tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments, 
and most of this was for grants. To put that amount in 
perspective, that assistance accounted for about one out of 
every five Federal dollars spent that year.
    GAO has an extensive body of work on Federal grants, and 
today I am going to talk about some of the broad challenges 
that we have found in that work for grant recipients and grant 
applicants. These include capacity challenges, challenges with 
coordinating grant programs across the Federal Government, and 
challenges with the accuracy and completeness of information 
about grant programs available to Congress and to the public.
    In terms of capacity, there are various challenges that 
grant applicants and recipients can encounter. Some grant 
programs require a local financial commitment, and that can be 
a challenge for communities or local governments with limited 
financial resources. Human capital capacity can be another 
challenge. Some smaller entities that do not often receive 
Federal funding may have less institutional knowledge or 
experience with the Federal grant process, and this could limit 
smaller entities' ability to fulfill the various requirements 
associated with grants such as fulfilling all the legal 
requirements and reporting requirement.
    Another type of challenge involves fragmented or 
overlapping grant programs. GAO's work has identified areas 
where there are numerous Federal grants that may not be well 
coordinated, and this fragmentation and overlap can limit cost 
effectiveness and increase burden for grant recipients.
    One example that we found in our work is within the area of 
broadband access. In reviewing the range of Federal broadband 
programs we identified at least 133 programs, including some 
grant programs that can be used to support broadband access in 
some way, and those programs were spread across 15 different 
Federal agencies. This patchwork of fragmented and overlapping 
programs creates complexity and barriers for potential grant 
applicants and could lead to wasteful duplication of funding 
and effort. We recommended that the Administration create a 
National Broadband Strategy to better synchronize these various 
programs.
    Finally, we have also seen challenges with the transparency 
of grant spending. A key source of information on Federal 
spending, including on grants, is USAspending.gov, which is the 
Federal Government's public website that displays information 
about descriptions and data on Federal spending, and this 
information can help with policymaking and could also help 
demonstrate to Congress and to the public how and where Federal 
grant funds are spent.
    The Federal Government has made significant strides in 
implementing USAspending over the years. However, through 
various reviews we have found some issues with the accuracy and 
completeness of the data and other information on USAspending.
    One example is the completeness of information on 
subrecipients. When a Federal grant recipient passes through 
funds to other entities to perform a portion of the work 
associated with the grant award, that information is supposed 
to be reported in most cases. However, we found gaps and errors 
with the subaward data on USAspending.
    One example is our recent review of U.S. funds provided to 
entities in China. We were unable to provide a complete 
accounting of the full extent of all grant and other funding to 
these entities because of limitations with the completeness and 
accuracy of that subaward data on USAspending. Given these and 
other known challenges, we are currently reviewing subaward 
data at USAspending and hope to have a report on that later 
this year.
    Chairman Peters, Members of the Committee, that concludes 
my prepared statement, and I look forward to answering any 
questions that you may have.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Arkin. Thank you for that.
    Our next witness is Dr. Meagan Elliott, Deputy Chief 
Financial Officer (CFO) at the city of Detroit. Dr. Elliott 
oversees all public grant and private philanthropic dollars for 
Detroit. Previously, Dr. Elliott served as the Chief Parks 
Planner for the city of Detroit, and focused on equitable 
access to public space city-wide and special projects.
    I would also like to recognize Terri Daniels, the Director 
of Grants for the city of Detroit, who has traveled with Dr. 
Elliott to be here today. Welcome.
    We are excited to have both of you here as well as other 
representatives from the city of Detroit, and look forward to 
working with all of you on this important issue.
    Dr. Elliott, you may proceed with your opening remarks.

 TESTIMONY OF MEAGAN ELLIOTT, PH.D.,\1\ DEPUTY CHIEF FINANCIAL 
OFFICER AND DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF DEVELOPMENT AND GRANTS, CITY OF 
                            DETROIT

    Ms. Elliott. Chairman Peters and distinguished Members of 
this Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before 
you today, representing the city of Detroit and our approach to 
securing and responsibly stewarding Federal grants. As the 
Deputy Chief Financial Officer for Detroit, I oversee the 
Office of Development and Grants. Typically, in municipal 
government, grant writers and managers are seated within 
departments and focused on specific subject matter portfolios, 
for example, in parks, public safety, or workforce.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Elliott appears in the Appendix 
on page 43.
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    In 2017, the city of Detroit decided to take a different 
approach. We reorganized into one centralized one department 
serving the entire city. We have a team of grant writers who 
work on seeking funds for multiple departments and manage key 
relationships with Federal, State, and local funders, which 
includes our philanthropic and corporate partners. We also have 
a team of grants managers divided into workflows of planning, 
implementation, compliance, and audit support. This 
restructuring strengthened our grants management systems, 
yielding a much higher success rate for applications, the 
ability to manage over double the fund portfolio with the same 
size staff, and a proportionately significant reduction in our 
findings over time. It also inadvertently prepared Detroit for 
the overlapping crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 
devastating flooding that happened across our city in 2021.
    Given these experiences, I was asked to share 
recommendations for how the Federal Government can better 
support municipalities, working hard to secure and spend grant 
dollars. My recommendations can best be summarized as the 
following three requests: greater flexibility, clarity, and 
consistency.
    First, flexibility. The American Rescue Plan Act State and 
Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) exemplifies what cities 
need most: flexibility within guardrails. ARPA SLFRF enabled 
Detroit to respond to the specific ways in which our city was 
impacted by the pandemic. In the summer of 2021, we carried out 
extensive community engagement throughout 65 community meetings 
and hundreds of resident survey responses to prioritize where 
and how to respond to the continuing effects of the pandemic 
and support our long-term economic recovery as a city. The 
flexibility provided by ARPA SLFRF regulations allowed us to 
develop a deliberative portfolio of programs, all of which are 
in various stages of implementation today.
    Greater flexibility is also needed in the way local dollars 
are counted toward Federal match. The City contributes 
significant resources toward projects that we submit for major 
grant applications, but these dollars often do not count toward 
match because the grant period is defined too narrowly, and 
turnover of our fiscal year or the timing of a philanthropic 
board meeting can make all the difference. Allowing for costs 
incurred on a project 12 or even six months prior to a grant 
period would significant increase our ability to participate.
    Our second request of this Committee is greater regulatory 
clarity. My team has spent a great deal of time determining 
whether to procure contracts, issue subrecipient agreements, or 
select beneficiaries. Even our auditors have trouble 
interpreting the uniform guidance when it comes to these 
determinations. Partner Federal agencies do offer supplemental 
workshops and training, but there is no free training or 
standardized checklists offered directly by the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) on this subject. With the revisions 
of the Uniform Guidance current underway, we believe greater 
clarity on this issue would dramatically reduce audit findings, 
as Uniform Guidance trainings can often be cost prohibitive and 
time intensive.
    Cities also seek greater clarity when it comes to 
performance management of our grants. Tracking outputs and 
outcomes are essential to understanding the impact of our 
programs. However, recently a consultant partner recommended 
that to follow the Office of Management and Budget best 
practices we would need to conduct full program evaluations for 
107 of our programs. Doing so would mean significant dollars 
directed toward performance measurement, often for 
interventions already supported by evidence, in lieu of actual 
direct services to Detroiters. This is a tradeoff we are not 
willing to make. While it is important to establish best 
practices, when cities look to Federal guidance and are focused 
on having both a spotless track record and the greatest impact, 
it is also critical to clarify minimum requirements.
    Last, we ask for greater consistency across platforms for 
how we communicate with our Federal agency partners. As one 
example, in our office alone we work 13 different Federal 
portals, three of which are the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency (FEMA), as well as 10 State portals that serve as a 
pass-through. Each portal has different authorization and user 
requirements, different regulations for document retention, and 
different staff to contact when a system crashes, as they 
consistently do, even up to a full week before reporting and 
application deadlines. Consolidation of these portals would 
allow for one platform with robust cybersecurity and bandwidth 
and a significant decrease in the work load of our grants 
managers.
    Thank you for allowing the time for these humble 
recommendations. It has been a privilege to speak before you 
today, and I look forward to any questions you may have.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Dr. Elliott.
    Today's final witness is Matthew Hanson, Associate Managing 
Director at Witt O'Brien's, a management consulting firm that 
specializes in crisis and emergency management. In his role, he 
supports State and local governments as they apply for and 
manage Federal grants. Previously he served as Arizona's 
statewide Grants Administrator, and is the Director of the 
Grants Policy Council (GPC) at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
    Mr. Hanson, welcome to our Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

 TESTIMONY OF MATTHEW HANSON,\1\ ASSOCIATE MANAGING DIRECTOR, 
                       WITT O'BRIEN'S LLC

    Mr. Hanson. Chairman Peters and distinguished Members of 
this Committee, during my almost 30-year career I have had the 
honor of supporting lifecycle grants management activities for 
Federal, Tribal, State, local, and non-governmental 
organizations.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hanson appears in the Appendix on 
page 49.
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    Over my career, I have heard the terms ``once in a 
generation'' and ``historic amounts of Federal funding'' at 
least five times. The first was during the early 1990s with the 
Crime Bill, and most recently with the COVID-19 and 
infrastructure funding. Despite the vast differences in these 
events, there is at least one commonality--Federal funding 
deployment was slow due to a lack of public sector capacity.
    Recent efforts to distribute critical funding more 
equitably have unfortunately spotlighted this lack of basic 
grants management capacity. That was especially the case with 
the Treasury's distribution of ARPA Fiscal Recovery Funds. In 
Senator Marshall's State of Kansas, more than 600 non-
entitlement units of local government have been the direct 
recipients of Federal funds, most for the very first time.
    Some of these jurisdictions only have a few dozen residents 
and a single employee. This is not a criticism of the 
distribution to Non-Entitlement Units of local government 
(NEUs), but an opportunity to underscore the point that we 
collectively need to do a better job of building grants 
management capacity across our country, while redoubling our 
efforts to streamline and simplify the process.
    For the past several years, I have had countless 
conversations with local and Tribal governments about seemingly 
mundane projects like replenishing gravel roads, culvert 
restoration, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) sidewalks, 
wastewater lagoons, and any number of similar types of basic 
infrastructure. These same jurisdictions are the communities 
that lack the resources and capacity to tap into Federal 
funding, either directly or as pass-through recipients from 
their States.
    The annual State of Grants Management Survey found that 70 
percent of organizations said that qualified staff is the most 
significant success factor for grants management, and 54 
percent said recruiting, training, and retaining them is the 
biggest challenge. The survey further found that both grant 
makers and grant recipients want more standardization and 
simplification. What is so interesting about these results is 
that the survey participants are those who actually have grants 
staff, so these are the jurisdictions who, in theory, have the 
tools and capacity to be successful, and yet they are still 
struggling.
    The current obstacles to accessing Federal funding begin 
with the very first step: registering in the System for Award 
Management. It is likely that your own offices have received 
numerous complaints and requests for assistance with SAM.gov. 
When things like copies of the State's constitution are being 
requested to prove when the State was established, you can 
imagine what an under-resourced community must overcome.
    Other Federal efforts to simplify and streamline the 
Federal grants process--the Uniform Guidance, Grants.gov, 
Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) 
reporting, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 
2014 (DATA) and Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements 
Transparency (GREAT) Acts--are all well intentioned and have 
the potential to help.
    The issue remains that Federal agencies have implemented 
these items in very different ways, and that these efforts do 
not address the underlying barriers to entry to participate in 
the Federal grants ecosystem.
    Now for some good news. There are organizations out there 
doing incredible work trying to build grants capacity to ensure 
no jurisdiction is left behind. Much of this work is being done 
by membership associations such as the National Association of 
Counties (NACo) and the National League of Cities (NLC), among 
other organizations. Much of this effort is being supported by 
philanthropic organizations who have seen these same issues and 
have felt compelled to help communities overcome barriers to 
entry and participation.
    In recent years, resources like Bloomberg Federal 
Assistance e311 and Local Infrastructure Hub have provided 
critical technical support to over 1,000 municipalities 
nationwide. What these organizations, and the Federal grants 
community as a whole, need is partnership and a commitment to 
bring lasting, systemic change to Federal grants by simplifying 
the process and creating an intentional and sustained effort to 
build capacity at all levels.
    Some areas of consideration are address the ongoing issues 
with SAM.gov, renew the focus on Federal plain English 
standards and reestablish a Federal grants coordinating 
organization.
    Finally, we have seen numerous examples of waste, fraud, 
and abuse which as stewards of taxpayer resources is completely 
unacceptable. Solving these issues will take the ongoing 
efforts of the compliance and oversight communities on the 
post-award side, but my ask of this Committee is to also 
address these issues on the pre-award side by investing in 
streamlining, coordination, communication, and fundamental 
grants management capacity.
    Thank you again for this opportunity to address the 
Committee.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Hanson.
    My first question will go to Dr. Elliott and then Mr. 
Hanson, and after Dr. Elliott has given her response if you 
would like to add your thoughts we would appreciate that as 
well. Both of you, in your testimony, mentioned how duplication 
and lack of consistency in administering the Federal 
Government's 1,900 grant programs causes issues. We know that 
notices of funding opportunities and rules for managing grants 
can vary, sometimes substantially, from program to program.
    I would like you to tell this Committee, kind of dive in a 
little bit deeper, and tell this Committee why that provides 
some real challenges to your office or the folks that you work 
with.
    Dr. Elliott, if you want to take the first crack at that I 
would appreciate it.
    Ms. Elliott. Thank you, Senator. Certainly any 
inconsistencies can be a tremendous challenge for our office. I 
would say that one of the best examples I could give would be 
in relation to how different agencies interpret Uniform 
Guidance and make exceptions or amendments to the Uniform 
Guidance, and the differences that can happen across agencies 
when that happens, especially if you are blending and braiding 
funds together to make a more transformational impact.
    One example I think of all the time is in relation to our 
Affordable Housing Program in Detroit. We have used funds from 
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which allow 
for an exemption to the competitive award process for 
subrecipients, and that is allowable under HUD. However, we 
have the exact same Affordable Housing Program where we are 
using SLFRF dollars, where that direct award to subrecipients 
is not allowable. We have gone through a competitive process 
for those.
    But the general confusion that that created for our staff 
and team on the front end, to clarify, to make sure that we 
were interpreting correctly, and to go back and forth between 
the housing and grants management teams took a significant 
amount of time and effort and then in deploying those funds.
    I think, to my colleagues' comments, if it is difficult to 
interpret for a professional grants management organization in 
a major American city, I can only imagine how challenging that 
would be to smaller municipalities or subrecipient 
counterparts.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Mr. Hanson.
    Mr. Hanson. The current ARPA funding, the State and Local 
Fiscal Recovery Funding at last count had over 90 individual 
guidance documents issued. As you can imagine, trying to keep 
track of what the current set of rules are, what you can fund, 
what you cannot fund is a herculean task.
    I will take a step back, though, and talk about the notices 
of funding availability or funding opportunity. Grants.gov is a 
wonderful solution. It is the front door for the Federal grants 
process. The problem is when you pull up a funding opportunity 
in Grants.gov and you are faced with a 70-page Notice of 
Funding Availability, and it takes you three and half hours to 
even figure out if you are eligible for the program or not. 
That is really where some of the improvements need to start, is 
breaking those Notices of Funding Availability down into plain 
English, things that people can truly understand, and not spend 
hours of staff time only to figure out that you are ineligible 
from applying.
    Yes, there are a lot of areas for improvement, post-award, 
on the compliance and guidance documents, but it really starts 
with the very first step, which is figuring out if you can even 
apply for a grant or not.
    Chairman Peters. Mr. Hanson, this is something that drives 
me crazy, especially given what you are saying about how 
complicated this is and how it is difficult for particularly 
rural areas or smaller communities to do it. But we have heard 
that agencies like to give grants to applicants that have 
successfully received a grant. Unless you have already received 
a grant, it is really hard to get a grant, which makes no sense 
because those communities that have not received a grant are 
probably oftentimes in the greatest need for those grants.
    My question for you, Mr. Hanson, is how would your 
prioritize? What should the Federal Government be doing right 
now to make sure that we are reaching high-need communities, 
even if those communities have not had the experience of 
getting a grant because of the complexity of getting the grant 
in the first place? How would you prioritize some action items 
that this Committee should be considering in that area?
    Mr. Hanson. Thank you for the question, Senator, and it 
really is fundamental grants management capacity development. 
There are not only the philanthropic organizations I mentioned 
who are out there doing wonderful work, but even organizations 
like the Appalachian Regional Commission and others who are 
really committed to building grants management capacity.
    Historically, Federal agencies do a wonderful job of 
training and technical assistance of their grantees. They have 
wonderful relationships, wraparound services. But what is 
really missing is the future applicant, the city out there, the 
nonprofit out there who needs the funding, has the critical 
resources, and there is nobody out there really providing 
generic grants management capacity development. I really think 
if the Federal agencies, many of the programs receive technical 
assistance funding with their programs, if part of that 
training and technical assistance money was invested in just 
generic Grants 101, building grants management capacity, would 
really help.
    We see, especially with the non-entitlement units, the 
local government, they do not know where to start. They do not 
know the terminology. You talk about the Federal Uniform 
Guidance or 2 Code of Federal Regulation (CFR) 200, and you are 
speaking another language, and it should not be that way.
    We really need to take a step back and invest in 
fundamental training and grants management development to make 
sure that our underserved communities, our under-resourced 
communities, both rural and urban, are not left behind with all 
the funding that is out there right now.
    Chairman Peters. Great. Thank you.
    Mr. Arkin, in your testimony you highlighted the importance 
of collaboration, coordination, and information sharing across 
all these agencies that are awarding these grants. Would you 
discuss for the Committee the current state of coordination 
efforts as you see it, across the Federal Government, and what 
can we do to improve that coordination, as you say that there 
are some shortfalls.
    Mr. Arkin. Sure. Thank you for the question. Coordination 
is a challenge. There are a lot of different grant programs in 
any given area, and sometimes it can be hard to know, do those 
programs really overlap or are they just fragmented? Do they 
have distinct purposes? That is really a first step, just 
figuring that out, making sure agencies are talking to one 
another, to coordinating, to meeting regularly, and to sharing 
information, to understand what they can do to remove any 
burdens that are there for recipients when you do have that 
overlap or possible fragmentation, which can be difficult to 
manage.
    Chairman Peters. Is there a mechanism to do that now?
    Mr. Arkin. There is not a set structure, necessarily. I 
think it is dependent on the particular area. For the broadband 
example I mentioned, there is discussion among some of the 
agencies, but there is no overarching structure or strategy 
that the Federal Government, that the Administration has to try 
to synchronize all of those programs.
    Chairman Peters. What would that look like, if we were 
going to do that?
    Mr. Arkin. We recommend that the Administration develop a 
national strategy. What we have heard in the response is that 
they are considering it. There have been some discussions and 
working groups, but we have not seen an actual strategy that 
lays out how these 15 different Federal agencies should be 
coordinating to make sure that there is not potential waste of 
funds, that there is not duplication of effort, and that these 
different programs are synchronized to the extent that they can 
be.
    Chairman Peters. Great. Thank you.
    Senator Lankford, you are recognized for your questions.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD

    Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thanks for 
holding this hearing, as well as it is incredibly important.
    Let me just set context for this to be able to walk 
through. We have 51 Federal agencies that distribute grants, 
131,000 recipient organizations, 1,900 grant programs in the 
Federal Government, and in fiscal year 2022 (FY22), the Federal 
Government spent over $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars in 
grants. This is an incredibly large, incredibly complicated 
issue, and as Mr. Hanson just mentioned before, if you are 
small town and you know that big towns get grants for water 
systems and for roads and whatever it may be, they think I have 
no idea where to even go to get it. I do appreciate us having 
the hearing and be able to walk through this and where the 
issues are.
    Mr. Arkin, let me start with 2019. Let us go back to 
ancient history, pre-COVID, if we have memory of that time 
period. A bill called the Grant Reporting Efficiency and 
Agreements Transparency Act (GREAT Act) had passed. I carried 
that through the Senate. Virginia Foxx carried that through the 
House. It was supposed to synchronize some of the data systems. 
How is OMB doing at this point in actually implementing the 
GREAT Act? What is the status of a bill that was done four 
years ago?
    Mr. Arkin. Sure. Thank you for the question. We actually 
have work underway looking at the GREAT Act, and we are looking 
at just that question, what is the status of OMB and also the 
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)--this is the 
largest grant-making agency--to implement the program, how does 
that align with the law and what the requirements are, and also 
how are both OMB and HHS engaging stakeholders, engaging other 
agencies, local communities, States as it develops the 
standards.
    Senator Lankford. What are you seeing so far? Obviously, 
this was passed four years ago. What are you seeing as far as 
implementation and creating the standards?
    Mr. Arkin. Right. The final deadline for when all this is 
supposed to be in place is at the end of 2023, this fiscal 
year, so it is getting close. We continue to have conversations 
with OMB about the steps that they have taken. There are an 
initial set of I believe over 500 different data standards that 
they have developed. We are going to be looking at those. We 
are going to be seeing how those align with the intent of the 
GREAT Act and also talking with others about their reaction to 
those standards that have been developed.
    Senator Lankford. Thanks for the oversight on that. We will 
look forward to walking through that to make that clear.
    There has been a lot of conversation about faith-based 
entities as well, if they are equal partners with every other 
entity. What are you seeing as far as oversight right now on 
faith-based entities requesting an application for a grant, not 
to increase their faith but for social services, other things 
that are actually happening out there? This seems to have had a 
rise and fall over the last several years of whether faith-
based institutions are full participants with everyone else in 
this. Are you seeing anything rise on this, because the Biden 
administration has noted they are going to relook at this issue 
again.
    Mr. Arkin. That is not something that we have looked at in 
our work. It is certainly something that we would be happy to 
talk to you or your staff about to understand your interests a 
little bit better and see if there are ways we can support and 
look into that.
    Senator Lankford. That would be great. Thank you.
    Let me bounce a couple of things off of you, just on 
grants.gov. Mr. Hanson had mentioned before the complexity of 
actually reading through the language. Sometimes it is 70 pages 
of government legalese to be able to go through, and the 
difficulty to finding if you are even eligible for this. 
Obviously that is something that can be done, can be 
standardized. Every single agency can have just simple, plain 
text language at the beginning of it, saying here is who 
eligible and here is who is not eligible, here is when it is 
available and here is when it closes. They are trying to get 
some of those elements in there, but it is certainly not clear 
at this point to be able to say the least. There are still some 
issues. While grants.gov is a very helpful site and the search 
features all work well, anyone who spends a little bit of time 
playing with grants.gov and just typing in different search 
words will find some gaps in the system.
    I would encourage anyone to be able to go in. For instance, 
I was playing with different words on it this morning, and 
typed in the word ``watermelon.'' I wanted to see if there were 
watermelon grants out there. What pops up when you type in 
``watermelon'' into the search in grants.gov is a grant 
opportunity for the U.S.-Egypt education program to help 
Egyptian children increase their math skills. How this is 
connected to watermelon I could not discover on it, but we 
still have issues with the system and the way that it is 
actually broken out.
    I would encourage, just in the oversight on this, to 
continue to be able to work toward getting consistent language, 
common-sense language, the way that is actually to be able to 
be listed in there that makes sense to people, and if anyone 
can find the word ``watermelon'' in the Egypt grant for 
children learning math in Egypt, that would be helpful. The 
second question would be, why are we giving a grant to help 
Egyptian children learn math? We have a few math problems here 
as well.
    The second thing on this is just a fragmentation that 
continues to be able to come up. This is an issue that we 
worked through just in Oklahoma. In a grant opportunity--and I 
need to make sure I get the language right--we had a challenge 
in actually listing out for a grant that they could not find us 
in the process because we appeared in the system as ``State 
Department of Education'' rather than the ``education,'' comma, 
``Oklahoma Department of.'' Our folks spent days trying to be 
able to unwind that one thing to be able to get into the 
system. That is an area that we would appreciate any kind of 
insight.
    Mr. Arkin, do you have any comments on that?
    Mr. Arkin. Yes. In general that is the big challenge, 
consistent language that gets used in the grant landscape. That 
is something that we have found in our work before with things, 
talking about the type of award. It affects both upfront, in 
terms of recipients looking for funding, and it affects the 
transparency aspect as well, in terms of getting a handle on 
where did the money go, what type of program, what location. 
When you have inconsistent terms that gets much harder to do.
    We have made recommendations to OMB to improve guidance to 
agencies so they can help, and we continue to monitor the 
status of that and OMB's efforts to implement those 
recommendations.
    Senator Lankford. OK. We will follow up on that. That would 
be helpful.
    The one last question is one I do not know if you can 
really offer but it is one that I will lay before this 
Committee as an issue that we need to have ongoing oversight, 
and it is the question of what grants do we fund? We have $31 
trillion in total debt. I think everyone on this dais is very 
aware of that. The challenge is we are still having problems in 
the grant funding going out.
    As we are just pulling the thread on grant funding that is 
out there, we recently found a grant for a study for medieval 
renaissance studies that is going to be conducting a conference 
in San Antonio, and it is a Federal grant to recreate the works 
of Shakespeare in a new cultural practice in decolonizing the 
U.S.-Mexico borderlands. That is a Federal grant.
    If we have not had enough Shakespeare on that, we have a 
different grant that is actually out there that is a Federal 
grant to create a virtual reality (VR) for Shakespeare so that 
you could put on the VR glasses and then you would think that 
you are in a Shakespearean theater, interacting with other 
individuals. Now again, Meta is doing this on a large scale 
while we have a Federal grant to be able to create this system. 
I do not know.
    We have another grant that is out there that has given to 
do a study of the cultural meaning of sound in colonial Mexico.
    I could go on and on, with just a quick pull of the thread 
on some of the grant issues. We do have a larger issue on 
grants, and with $1 trillion in grant spending we need to 
determine what is a water system in a community that 
desperately needs help for a water system and what is a grant 
that is going to do a study of sound in colonial Mexico, and 
how do we figure out how to be able to prioritize those two. 
That is a larger conversation we can have in the days ahead.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Lankford.
    Senator Rosen, you are recognized for your questions.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN

    Senator Rosen. Thank you for holding this hearing. Thank 
you to the witnesses for being here. I want to agree with 
Senator Lankford on the complexity of applying for grants and 
IT modernization. What he is talking about in these search 
strings and all of this, we need systems that are nimble, that 
are able to do this, and good, common front ends. They are so 
complex. We have to make it more user friendly. We can make it 
more searchable to access the programs that we need to and find 
the ones that maybe are not being utilized because people 
cannot actually find it or apply for it.
    That is what I am going to talk about because these 
barriers, for Nevada as well, accessing our Federal grants. 
Despite making significant improvements over the past half of a 
decade, the State of Nevada continues to underperform in total 
dollars of Federal grants per capita. We are ranked 45th in the 
Nation.
    The Nevada Advisory Council on Federal Assistance (NACFA) 
has published priorities for addressing these perennial 
barriers, some of which Senator Lankford alluded to. We want to 
obtain and maximize our Federal grants, including streamlining 
the review and authorization process for grant work plans by 
the State's Interim Finance Committee. We want to expand our 
technical assistance training and coordination related to 
receiving these Federal grants, and increasing statewide 
reporting.
    To address these recommendations and increase the amount of 
grant dollars coming to Nevada, last year our State created the 
Governor's Office of Federal Assistance (OFA).
    Mr. Hanson, what steps should Nevada's newly launched OFA--
and I am sure other States could probably use this advice as 
well--what should we take to be an effective resource so that 
grant applicants, particularly in our rural areas, they have 
smaller infrastructure for them to apply for these grants, that 
they are aware of the services that it provides and they can 
access it easily, nimbly, that ``watermelon'' would only show 
up where it is actually there, and utilize it to secure the 
Federal funding that we do work so hard to provide for public 
projects.
    Mr. Hanson. Thank you, Senator, and I want to mention they 
have some wonderful staff standing up that office. I had the 
pleasure of working with many of them when I was with the State 
of Arizona.
    Too often State agencies in a similar capacity are inward 
looking. They are focused on how the State agencies can more 
effectively apply for and receive funding. While that is 
important, the larger issue, and the issue you just discussed, 
is the outward facing. How do you help the local governments, 
the nonprofits, the K-12 institutions in your State? It starts 
with grants training. It starts with meaningful, not one-hour 
webinars, here is what a program is about, but really digging 
deep, how do you build internal controls? How do you put 
together a capital stack?
    A concept of a capital stack is how do you take general 
fund, bond proceeds, grant funds, Inflation Reduction Act tax 
credits and bundle them together so that you can actually 
accomplish a project. For a smaller municipality with limited 
capacity, that is a very foreign concept, but the reality is 
they are not going to be successful going forward unless they 
understand concepts like that.
    One-on-one training, capacity development, and when you are 
doing training it is homework, and I hate to make it sound like 
school, but it is homework. Your homework today is to go 
register with grants.gov.
    Senator Rosen. You recently helped Arizona do this. Can you 
talk about what you did to boost up Arizona, so we could take 
some of those lessons back to our State?
    Mr. Hanson. One of the first things we did with the State 
of Arizona was tried to solve our own State problem. 
Previously, if you were a local government and you were trying 
to find the funding opportunities available from the State, you 
had to go to 23 separate State agency websites to see who had 
what funding available. The first step we did was we put it all 
in one spot, sort of State version of grants.gov, so our local 
governments only had to go to one website.
    We took the notices of funding availability and we 
distilled them down with a partner into a four-page, readable, 
plain English.
    Senator Rosen. I should have my Nevada folks talk to the 
Arizona folks.
    Mr. Hanson. There are some real leaders across the country, 
in Rhode Island, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Arizona. Certainly 
there are some people who are really doing some wonderful work 
in this space and could certainly be resources.
    Senator Rosen. We will have them reach out.
    I want to move on and talk to Mr. Arkin a little bit, 
because in fiscal year 2020, the project grants per capital in 
Nevada amounted to $342 per capita, for a ranking of 43rd in 
the Nation. It was 36 percent lower than the United States 
average of $493 per person, and over a quarter lower than the 
median State, which happens to be Mississippi, which has a 
population size that is very similar to Nevada.
    Mr. Arkin, what can Congress do to support our States? 
Again, we have to find ways to ease these barriers that are 
keeping some of us at the back of the pack. We have just spoken 
a little bit about that. There have been significant issues 
with SAM.gov system, how we compete competitively. Do you have 
some thoughts on this?
    Mr. Arkin. Yes. One way that Congress has already taken at 
least one step that could help in this area is with the GREAT 
Act, that we discussed earlier, and really help standardize 
some of the language to actually make it easier for applicants, 
for particular applicants who may be applying for multiple 
grants to use the same language, to potentially use pre-
populated information to reduce some of that burden.
    Part of it also comes down to awareness. As a person whose 
name is on the GAO website and works on grant issues, I get 
phone calls from people who work in city government, with small 
cities, who just want to know, how do I find out about grants? 
Even, just anecdotally, it is clear to me, at least, that there 
are challenges there, and so that is not something that we have 
done a lot of work on before. We usually have been looking at 
what is the process for managing grants that are already in the 
system. So it is a challenge.
    Senator Rosen. I have a person specifically on my team that 
that is their portfolio, to manage grants in Nevada.
    I will submit this next question for the record, but it is 
about Tribal communities and their access. I think there might 
be some other folks coming, so that is fine.
    I will ask the last question, and thank you.
    The grants for Tribal communities, we have 28 Tribes in 
Nevada, and I have heard from all of them about the challenges 
they face again, the capacity that they have in order to apply 
for these, the complexity oftentimes. Tribes have been 
historically underserved through Federal grant programs. 
Thankfully, with the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure 
Law and the Inflation Reduction Act we have made historic 
investments in Indian Country. We are going to improve the 
internet access, some of the ways that will help them get 
through to these things.
    But the funding opportunities are only going to make a 
difference if the Federal agencies are engaged. Mr. Arkin, at 
GAO you have issued several reports outlining the actions that 
the Federal Government must take to improve how they share 
information with grants for Federal grants with Tribes. How can 
you improve the communication there? Again, some of our Tribes 
are still waiting to get good internet access, so how are you 
doing the outreach to be sure that they get the funding that 
they deserve to improve whatever it is that is right for them?
    Mr. Arkin. Sure. I am happy to talk about that. As you 
mentioned we have a couple of reports that we have issued on 
that particular area. One example we found was in the economic 
development area, where we found over 20 different grant 
programs that were either targeted or----
    Senator Rosen. You issue the reports, but then what is the 
action item that you are taking after the outreach, because 
having a stack of reports is not helping Indian Country. It is 
not helping our Tribal communities. They can go through your 
stack and say, oh, we have not done good enough. What are you 
going to do about it? What are the action items you are taking?
    Mr. Arkin. What we found is that the agencies were not 
making available the information so that the Tribal communities 
would know about the grants. We made recommendations for the 
agencies, and this is the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 
and the Small Business Administration (SBA), to maintain a list 
of this information so they could communicate it to the Tribal 
entities so they are even aware of the grants and can apply for 
them. We continue to follow up on the progress in implementing 
that recommendation.
    Senator Rosen. We do ask for a lot of reports but they do 
not do anyone any good if the action items are not followed up 
on. You are going to tell SBA or USDA. We want to be sure that 
then they follow up on what they are doing, because it just 
gets lost in a long chain of reports. We pass something 
wonderful, like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the 
Inflation Reduction Act, to invest in our communities, and 
those reports of action items that are not followed up on and 
are not taken seriously hurt our communities. Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Rosen.
    Senator Ossoff, you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR OSSOFF

    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
holding this hearing. Thank you to our panelists.
    Mr. Arkin, I would like to begin with a discussion of the 
particular needs of rural communities in Georgia. I hear so 
frequently from county chairs, commissioners, mayors of small, 
rural localities that they have such difficulty applying for 
and securing Federal grants. They, in many cases, do not have 
the financial resources or the full-time staff power to have 
the situational awareness about funds that are available, and 
the capacity to write these grant proposals and compete for the 
funds.
    Of course, my office, we do everything that we can to 
ensure they are aware of these opportunities and help guide 
them through the process. But there are also steps that the 
Administration could take to ease the path to success, to meet 
unmet needs in water infrastructure, broadband access, public 
safety, health care, first responders.
    From your position at GAO, and recognizing you are a lege 
branch actor, what recommendations do you have for steps the 
Biden administration could take right now to ensure that rural 
communities can access their fair share of these opportunities 
through infrastructure law and other Federal grant programs?
    Mr. Arkin. One recent initiative that the Administration 
has taken is known as the Rural Partners Network (RPN). It is 
relatively new. It is a group of Federal agencies. There are a 
number of States that participate. One of the key goals of that 
is to highlight grants, to highlight opportunities within rural 
communities. It is not something that we have really looked 
into, again, because it is quite new, but it is something we 
are following, and I would be happy to discuss with you.
    There is also the technical assistance aspect to it. Most 
of what we have done on technical assistance involves 
assistance that agencies provide to entities or governments who 
have already received grants, in terms of implementing the 
grant, following the various requirements, especially the 
reporting requirements, the audit requirements. We have not 
really looked at the upfront part of that, what can be done 
with technical assistance to help entities, to help small 
governments even understand what grants are available to them 
that could help their communities.
    Senator Ossoff. I think that could be a very fruitful area 
for additional analysis, and I will follow up with you and your 
team about trying to get some more recommendations that the 
Federal Government can take but also best practices and advice 
for these rural communities who want to be aware of the 
opportunities available to them and effectively compete for 
this funding.
    Let us talk about some of the unique challenges faced by 
predominantly Black communities in Georgia and across the 
country. A concern that I hear frequently from elected leaders, 
faith leaders, business leaders, civic leaders, whether in 
DeKalb County, Clayton County, Chatham County, is a sense that 
in these predominantly Black communities there is not 
sufficient outreach by Federal agencies, not sufficient efforts 
to ensure that grant programs that can address the particular 
needs of these communities. For example, in Georgia there is a 
maternal health crisis that, in particular, impacts Black 
women. Those opportunities are not communicated effectively 
enough.
    What steps could the Administration or Congress take in 
order to ensure that there is equitable awareness and access of 
these grant opportunities that would be of particular interest 
to predominantly Black communities?
    Mr. Arkin. I think to some extent the answer to that is 
similar to the one that we just discussed in terms of what can 
agencies do on the technical assistance side up front. My 
understanding is the Administration put out guidance, in 
particular, with funding under the American Rescue Plan Act, to 
look at equity or to encourage agencies to provide funding in a 
way that, at the least, considers equity. That is another area 
as we conduct a lot of work on the American Rescue Plan Act and 
other COVID-related funding that we are planning on looking 
into.
    Senator Ossoff. What I would suggest you might look into is 
how could an administration assess what the likely, most urgent 
needs are for a given constituency or community, if it is known 
that a particular part of Georgia has a maternal health crisis, 
or that small businesses in a particular part of Georgia lack 
access to capital. How can an administration be proactive about 
making local leaders aware of opportunities to address those 
specific issues?
    Let us talk a little bit about language access. Through the 
appropriations process I recently helped to fund an 
extraordinary organization called Ser Familia in Georgia, which 
serves Latino families. They are standing up a new family 
resource center in Clayton County.
    What steps are currently being taken that you are aware of, 
either by us in Congress, that you have tracked, by the 
Administration at present, and what opportunities are there to 
expand opportunities for predominantly Latino-serving 
nonprofits to compete for Federal grants, where there may be 
language access barriers to awareness of the grant 
opportunities and pursuit of the funds?
    Mr. Arkin. Offhand I am not aware of anything there, but we 
can get back to you and take a look and see what we can find on 
that.
    Senator Ossoff. Yes, I would like you to take a look at 
this, because there are, in some cases, urgent public health, 
public safety, small business-related needs in Latino 
communities, and these are Americans who may be denied their 
fair share of Federal grant funding because the nonprofits that 
serve these communities may operate predominantly in Spanish. 
Language access for competitive Federal grant programs is 
something that I think warrants some more attention from GAO.
    Finally, I want to discuss the challenges that many 
communities in Georgia are facing with respect to railroad 
crossing grants, in particular smaller communities, whether it 
is Garden City in coastal Georgia, Griffin, McDonough, 
Juliette. Georgians are increasingly finding themselves stuck 
at railroad crossings for outrageous periods of time. This is 
not just a matter of convenience. It can be a matter of life or 
death. You have a delivering mother in labor who needs to get 
to the hospital, and an hour and a half delay at a railroad 
crossing impairs that, and that can be a matter of life or 
death, or the health of the baby.
    Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law we in Congress 
established a Railroad Crossing Elimination (RCE) Program, 
which is a grant program to help localities, for example, 
pursue track relocation, improvement or installation of 
protective devices, signals, and signs. What steps can we take, 
Mr. Arkin, to ensure that smaller communities like Griffin, 
Juliette, Garden City, McDonough in Georgia are set up to 
succeed when they apply for these funds?
    Mr. Arkin. That is another program I am not familiar with 
the specifics of that one, but we could get back to you and 
take a look and see what we can find.
    Senator Ossoff. Why don't you take a stab at it. Consider 
other programs like this one, opportunities for local 
jurisdictions to make improvements to their transportation 
infrastructure to address urgent matters, not just of 
convenience but of public health and public safety. What advice 
do you have for small localities who seek opportunities such as 
this one?
    Mr. Arkin. I think it comes down to, to some extent, 
outreach from the agencies, to ensure that the communities are 
aware that these grants are out there. It is hard to apply for 
a grant if you do not know it is there. As I mentioned before, 
I hear these calls or emails from people who want to know, and 
the Infrastructure Act is an example of that. How do I apply 
for grant funding in the transportation area that my small 
community can take advantage of or apply for? I think outreach 
and communication from the agencies is a big part of that.
    Senator Ossoff. I appreciate your answers. I always 
appreciate GAO's work, and my office works hard to make these 
localities aware of these opportunities. What is coming out of 
this discussion, that maybe we can pursue together, is I think 
there are ripe opportunities for GAO to study successes and 
failures. You can look at communities in Georgia that have 
tried to compete for Federal funds but not had the wherewithal, 
resources, or forward guidance to do so successfully, and 
others that have won these Federal funds, and we can work 
together to improve guidance for local communities, for 
congressional offices who have a role to play, and Federal 
agencies to improve outreach and accessibility for these 
programs. Let us work together on that.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Ossoff.
    Dr. Elliott, this question is for you. We know that the 
Federal Government uses over 190 different grants management 
software systems. That is a lot of software systems. Could you 
tell this Committee about some of the problems that your office 
faces when you have so many different software portals that you 
have to keep track of and have some degree of expertise on?
    Ms. Elliott. Thank you, Senator, for the question. Yes, we 
have a robust system of tracking. The authorization 
requirements are significant for each of these systems. So 
myself and Ms. Daniels, who is here with me today, we are 
typically the only, or one of a small number of authorized 
users. That can sometimes be a bottleneck for some of the 
processes that we need to upload for reports or applications.
    I mentioned previously the crashing of those systems and 
how significant that has been. I think that is something I 
would not bring up in front of this Committee unless it was 
very important to us. It happens all the time, and it is 
something that is pretty demoralizing for the team when you can 
spend an entire workday trying to submit something and then the 
whole thing falls apart in the last minute. Again, our team has 
established a process of submitting for reports and 
applications a week prior to the deadline, to try and avoid 
that, and it still happens.
    All of those kinds of inconsistency has been challenging to 
us. I would say we have a significant amount of grants managers 
and folks that are very familiar with these portals, that have 
relationships with our Federal agency partners, that can call 
them directly, and we still have these challenges. For other 
communities that do not have that same kind of access it can be 
even more challenging.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Also, Dr. Elliott, in your 
testimony you told us that the city of Detroit took special 
care to give subawards to organizations that had never received 
grant money before. Can you tell the Committee about how the 
city does that? What are some of the barriers that you are 
attempting to overcome to allow this to move forward, and how 
we may learn from that example in terms of our thinking about 
how we improve the system?
    Ms. Elliott. Thank you, Chairman, for that question. This 
is something that we are very passionate about. We have heard 
feedback from small nonprofits and small businesses across the 
city that basically it is hard enough for them to work with 
city government in the first place. They do not want anything 
to do with Federal grants, which is really disheartening 
because there are so many opportunities to work together on 
these programs, and either be the vendor that delivers the roof 
repair or the nonprofit that helps support our local kind of 
workforce programs.
    What we have done specifically is we have partnered with 
third-party entities that basically serve as trusted local 
navigators. They seek out the folks that might be interested in 
applying for these opportunities, whether it is through, again, 
a contract that is out to bid or through a subrecipient 
opportunity that we issue. What those third-party entities do--
and I should say we have no financial relationship with them 
whatsoever. They are funded philanthropically. But what they do 
is they serve as that central navigator. They take in folks and 
they truly hand-hold with them every step of the process, so 
how do I register for the system to even submit a bid to the 
city? What does that look like? All the way through what is 
good documentation retention policies? How do I submit invoices 
that are going to be compliant for a lot of these Federal 
funds?
    That is something that we have developed both, again, for 
the small business sector locally but then also for the 
nonprofit sector. We work with a couple of different groups, 
and it is something we are really passionate about and would 
love to share with others who are looking to develop the same 
type of program.
    Chairman Peters. Wonderful.
    My last question is going to be to all three of you. I will 
probably start with Mr. Arkin and we will work down to Mr. 
Hanson here.
    We have heard a lot here today, and there is a lot more 
that we need to hear in the days, weeks, and months ahead. But 
I always like to leave with a takeaway as to what you think 
should be the biggest takeaway that my Committee gets from this 
hearing. I would like each of you to tell me what you think is 
the most important thing that this Committee should learn from 
the testimony that you gave today? What are some of the action 
steps that we should take to help this process? It is similar 
to the question I earlier to Mr. Hanson about how do we 
prioritize.
    What should be our major takeaway? If you were sitting on 
this Committee and you had to prioritize something to really 
focus on, what would that be? Mr. Arkin.
    Mr. Arkin. I think one thing to think about, and we talked 
a lot about, is sort of the upfront knowledge on the 
availability of grants. It is not something, again, where we 
have done a lot of work, and we are happy to continue our 
discussions with the Committee to look into what we can do to 
support it. But that, for me, is a big takeaway.
    Chairman Peters. Great. Dr. Elliott.
    Ms. Elliott. Thank you, Senator. For me I think centrally 
coordinating grants management is really critical to every team 
that we work with in the city, and I could see that being a big 
challenge across the country. Greater clarity and simplicity 
around how to deploy these dollars, strong definitions for 
beneficiaries and how we define quasi-governmental entities 
would make a massive time difference in how we are able to get 
these dollars quicker to our communities, and it would create 
that more robust network of small businesses and nonprofits 
that we can work with.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Mr. Hanson.
    Mr. Hanson. Leverage and learn from the projects that are 
going on right now outside of the Federal Government. The 
Senator asked about how we can support Native American 
communities. The Native American Finance Officers Association 
(NAFOA) has a grants training program at the University of New 
Mexico, doing wonderful work.
    The other Senator asked about the railway crossing program. 
The National League of Cities, U.S. Conference of Mayors, 
Results for America, Bloomberg, and other philanthropic 
organizations have their local infrastructure hub where they 
are actually taking those small communities through an eight-
module course to get them prepared to go after that program. 
There are States standing up their own grant capacity 
development activities, local infrastructure hubs.
    There are some really wonderful things going on outside the 
Federal space that the Federal agencies could really support 
and lean on and leverage to really improve the grants 
management ecosystem right now.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, and I would like to take this 
opportunity to thank each of our witnesses for joining us here 
today, and I am certainly grateful to your contribution to this 
discussion. We will look forward to continuing to have this 
discussion, perhaps not in a formalized way, as we are here in 
the hearing, but clearly something that we are very focused on 
as a Committee.
    Federal grants help communities in Michigan and across the 
country deliver key services like strengthening infrastructure, 
supporting first responders, building broadband systems, 
mitigating natural disasters. I think today's hearing has made 
clear that the Federal Government can do more to help all of 
our communities to access as well as to manage the Federal 
grants that they receive.
    Too often the burdens created by the Federal Government's 
lack of coordination and consistency fall on smaller and less-
resourced communities. These are communities that oftentimes 
can benefit the most from grants.
    Reducing the complexity of the Federal grants process will 
increase access to these important resources as well as promote 
the responsible use of taxpayer money. As Chairman of this 
Committee I will work with my colleagues to streamline the 
grants process across the Federal Government. Your testimony 
today will help inform the Committee's future legislative 
activities and oversight action on these issues, and we look 
forward to having a continuing dialog with the three of you.
    The record for this hearing will remain open for 15 days, 
until 5 p.m. on May 17, 2023, for the submission of statements 
and questions for the record.
    This hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:05 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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