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Overview: The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy (OST-P) is providing guidance on competitive award selections made after January 20, 2021, that do NOT have fully obligated grant agreements or cooperative agreements in place.
Projects with executed grant agreements in place that are fully obligated are not subject to the guidance below. For selections with partially obligated grant agreements, the same review should take place before awarding subsequent phases or adding additional funds to an existing grant agreement. Additional guidance will be provided regarding revisions to standard terms and conditions appearing in draft grant agreements or templates.
Summary: All competitive grant and cooperative agreement award selections must comply with current Administration priorities and Executive Orders (EO) that address energy, climate change, diversity and gender, and economic analysis, and other priorities. Applicable Executive Orders and Memoranda include:
· Executive Order 14148, Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.
· Executive Order 14154, Unleashing American Energy
· Executive Order 14151, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEl Programs and Preferencing
· Executive Order 14168, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government Secretarial Order 2100.7,
· Ensuring Reliance Upon Sound Economic Analysis in Department of Transportation Policies, Programs, and Activities Secretarial Memorandum on Implementation of Executive Orders Addressing Energy, Climate Change, Diversity, and Gender
This guidance provides directions for identifying award selections without fully obligated grant agreements that do not comply with these priorities.
ACTION: For projects announced from FY 2022 through FY 2025, review all award selections without grant agreements and partially obligated grant agreements. The focus of this review is to identify project scope and activities that are allocating funding to advance climate, equity, and other priorities counter to the Administration's Executive Orders.
Step 1: Program Identification. Identify Programs for which award selections may have included any of the following elements: equity activities, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) activities, climate change activities, environmental justice (EJ activities, gender-specific activities, when the primary purpose is bicycle infrastructure (i.e., recreational trails and shared-use paths, etc.), electric vehicles (EV), and EV charging infrastructure. Additionally, project-by-project review of selections to identify any project scope elements for potential removal are required for any Programs that meet the criteria below:
· Statutory language includes equity requirements, climate considerations, or bicycle infrastructure.
· NOFO mandatory evaluation criteria includes equity and/or climate requirements.
· Eligible activities included bicycle infrastructure, EV and/or EV charging infrastructure.
Programs that do not meet the criteria above should be shared with the OA Administrator or equivalent OST leadership for concurrence/confirmation. Following OA Administrator or equivalent OST leadership concurrence, the OST Office of Policy (OST-P) and office of General Counsel (OGC) will provide final confirmation on whether a program is required to conduct a project-by-project review. If OST-P and OGC confirm that a project-by-project review. If OST-P and OGC confirm that a project-by-project review is required, offices should proceed to Step 2. Please submit review requests to the OST Policy Board at OSTPoli...@dot.gov.
Step 2: Project-by-project review. Programs that require further review shall have program teams examine each individual project to identify those award selections that have project scopes that include any of the project elements listed in Step 1. (i.e., equity activities, DEI activities, climate change activities, etc.) Those teams should document their project-by-project examination and flag any project scope elements or activities for potential removal, including:
· Project activities such as equity analysis, green infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, EV and/or EV charging infrastructure.
· Project purpose or primary project benefits include equity and/or climate such as-projects that purposefully improve the condition for EJ communities or actively reduce GHG emissions.
Note: if project scope elements are based in statute, program offices should consult with applicable legal counsel, and following legal concurrence, raise any proposed scope changes to OA leadership.
OA leadership shall review the findings from the Team review, and recommend to OST-P and OGC which project selections should:
1. Continue in their current form with no change;
2. Be revised with a reduced or modified scope; or
3. Be canceled entirely.
Step 3: Project Scope Revision. Award selections identified in Step 2.b must update project scopes to eliminate flagged activities, and where possible replace identified elements with relevant elements that align with program statute, the scope of the application submission, and the current Administration EOs.
Where the scope of the project includes elements note above, Team should negotiate with project sponsors to update project scopes to eliminate and, where possible, replace those identified elements with relevant elements that align with the program statute, the original scope of the application submission, and current Administration EOs.
1. If the project sponsor agrees to proceed with scope changes, proceed to grant agreement formulation and execution. The project sponsor may propose alternative project elements to substitute for the redline elements that should be removed as long as they 1) align with the program statute, 2) are consistent with the purposes of the original scope of the application submission, and 3) align with the current Administration EOs.
2. If the project sponsor does not agree to remove project elements noted in Step 2, and replace with acceptable alternative scope, then the Team should proceed with a reduced award that removes the flagged scope and activities.
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