Norman Chad has a weekly, often humorous, sports column that runs in the Washington Post. Following major sporting events, he’ll often write a column giving a tongue-in-cheek rundown of the events as they happened during the game. We’d thought we take a similar “timeline” approach to this blog post for President Trump’s State of the Union speech last night. The difference here is we aimed to highlight discussions during the speech that could affect grants. We pretty much had a feeling going in that he wouldn’t discuss such topics as the procurement threshold under the uniform guidance or concerns about subrecipient monitoring, but maybe there would be policy issues he would mention that would affect grant funding. The following was the timeline of grants interest as we recorded it:

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) New York health officials are providing extra training for staff and making system modifications to ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries in a specific “newly eligible” category actually meet federal and state eligibility requirements, in response to recommendations in a recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit.

The growing #MeToo movement brought to light cases of sexual harassment in Hollywood and in the political arena. Concerns over sexual harassment and discrimination now appear to be working their way into the federally funded research community.

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials said they are taking measures to help states submit compete Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) data that will enable the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to better oversee state programs, in response to a recent recommendation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Overseeing grant programs has never been the easiest task, and confusing regulations and requirements tend to make that process even harder. That’s why it was heartening to see that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issue a clarification to its regulations to better explain its stance on single audit requirements.

The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) recently rejected an audit recommendation by the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) to conduct site visits to ensure that American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) Head Start grant recipients are implementing corrective actions to address audit findings, stating that the agency will instead follow uniform grant guidance requirements and assess recipients’ subsequent year single audits to ensure proper audit follow-up.

Along with the more noteworthy requirements when administering a federal award, such as financial and performance reporting, indirect costs and subrecipient monitoring, grant recipients should not forget the other “strings attached” when it comes to award oversight. In fact, in Thompson’s Federal Grants Management Handbook, we dedicate a whole tab (Tab 500) to such regulations and statutes that have an impact on grants. One of these “strings” is research grantee compliance with the Bayh-Dole Act.

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) To clarify potential confusion resulting from “ambiguous” language in the Grants Oversight and New Efficiency Act (GONE Act) (Pub. L. 114-117), the chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) recently issued a letter to Congress stating that each federal agency Offices of Inspector General (OIGs) will conduct risk assessments of their respective agency’s grant closeout process as required under the act by March 31, 2020.

For our first blog post for 2018, we’d like to offer a warning, in the form of a rhyme: