Conflicting guidance in federal grant programs is resolved through a defined hierarchy of laws, regulations, and policies that establish an order of precedence. Understanding the order of precedence ensures compliance and helps resolve discrepancies effectively.
Key Insights
- Grant managers must navigate multiple layers of authority, starting with the U.S. Constitution and progressing through federal statutes, executive guidance, and agency regulations.
- The Office of Management and Budget provides critical interpretation through circulars, which federal agencies then use to shape their own regulations and guidelines.
- After federal guidance, managers must consider national policy requirements, terms and conditions of specific grants, and applicable state, local, tribal, and institutional policies.
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Oftentimes, as grant managers, we're dealing with conflicting regulations and policies. We may have one set of laws and regulations saying one thing, and then another set of laws and regulations saying something completely different. It's essential we understand the order of precedence to understand which is the controlling piece of legislation.
And it starts at the beginning with the United States Constitution. And then it flows down to federal statutes, specifically congressional authorization and appropriations legislation. And then it moves on to the executive branch's interpretation of this legislation and federal statutes through either executive memos from the president's office or from circulars published by the Office of Management and Budget.
After that, we have the federal agencies' policies and rules, their regulations and guidelines, their interpretation of, once again, the congressional authorization and appropriations legislation, and then the executive branches' either memorandums of understanding or published circulars from OMB. After that, we have to consider a slew of national policy requirements, which also have an effect on how we interpret grants. Additionally, after all of this is considered, we must consider the actual federal award itself and look at the general terms and conditions and sometimes the specific or special terms and conditions attached to that grant award.
And finally, we have state laws, then local, territorial, tribal laws, and the recipient's own institutional internal policies and procedures. This is the order of precedence that we must follow when determining if there's conflicting language on how to effectively execute a grant program.