Given the often rancorous debates that happen around legislation, particularly around anything that involves funding, a brush with the appropriations process leaves a lot of folks cold.

Following each sunset eventually comes a new sunrise, unless you’re talking about government policy. However, some federal requirements of the past may be worth seeing the light of day again. One such document is the Funding Report to the Congress.

(This post is excerpted from an article in the July 4 Local/State Funding Report.) A bipartisan proposal to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) that expired in 2003 is advancing in the Democratic Senate, but its ultimate passage faces long odds in the Republican House, where fiscal conservatives are more focused on enacting deep spending cuts to discretionary programs, especially in the areas of labor, health care and human services.

Mention the word "policy," and you'll start to see eyes glaze over and hear snoring.  (In fact, that's a great trick for getting yourself out of most unwanted conversations -- just try it sometime.  Unless you're in D.C., of course, where it may be considered a mating call.)  However, as the undercurrent and anchor of federal spending, policy is a critical element of the context for those who work with grants, with concrete and material consequences. A number of current policy debates and developments are teed up to have significant consequences on federal funding and those impacted by it:

(This list was originally posted by Andrew Brownstein, one of Thompson’s federal education policy editors, and recently appeared on Title I-Derland, Thompson’s blog on federal K-12 policy.) Listening [earlier this month] to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan repeat, for possibly the 500th time, that No Child Left Behind was “loose on the goals, but tight on the means,” was to become aware of a paradox of the so-called education reform moment we now find ourselves in. From NCLB through Race to the Top, we have lived through one of the most dynamic periods of educational change in our history and yet the rhetoric used to describe that change is often hackneyed, shopworn, dare I say… clichéd. We typically don’t get what comedian George Carlin described as a feeling of “vuja des”— that “strange sense that, somehow, none of this sh*t has happened before.”

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently provided a nice heads-up for potential applicants for grants through its Sustainable Communities Initiative. The agency released a pre-solicitation for Regional Planning Grants through the program on June 20.

What a tangled web we weave – over websites.

(This post was written by Megan Fillebrown, editorial assistant for Thompson's grants group.) It may seem counterintuitive to fire police officers during a recession when crime is likely to increase, but that’s exactly what cities across the country are doing to cut costs.

(This story is excerpted from the June 27 Local/State Funding Report.) Cities and towns are scrambling to support their neediest citizens in light of additional federal spending cuts looming in the next round of budget talks, already-reduced budgets, dwindling Recovery Act funds and further reductions for programs such as the Community Development Block Grants and the Community Services Block Grants.

Happy Monday, readers!  Today's post with news from around the grants world is brought to you by the letter "N."  First and foremost, the National Grants Partnership has restructured under new leadership.  Established in 2004, NGP "is a cooperative initiative among Federal officials, representatives of state, local and tribal governments; their executive branch grants offices; and nonprofit organizations." The group's longtime co-chairs stepped down recently when Tony Cavataio retired from the Department of Education and Cornelia Chebinou refocused on her role as the Washington Director of the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers.