Replacement plan for CDBGs still cooking

The Bush Administration proposal to replace a slew of community development grant programs with a single formula grant is decidedly on the back burner for this year due to Congressional opposition. However, within the last couple of weeks the advisory committee for the "Strengthening America's Communities Initiative" was still discussing the proposed catchall grant program in the future definite tense.

The transcript of the advisory committee's June 27 conference call takes some wading through, but bits of it make interesting reading, if only for clues to what might happen in next year's budget cycle. Much of the discussion is the equivalent of a markup on the committee's recommendations, which are presumably to be included in legislation to be submitted to Congress later this summer. The draft recommendations document does not itself appear to be available, but clues to its contents are available in the transcript. For example, on Page 11, Wanetta Ayers of the Southwest Alaska Municipal Conference objects to a provision that would make "challenge grants" the "prevailing model" for grantmaking.

So for the long term if not the short term, it might be worth a look.