Federal assistance comes with laws, rules and regulations that must be followed to maximize opportunities for eligible reimbursements. Following the laws, rules and meeting regulatory requirements help to expedite needed funding and speed the delivery of preparedness, prevention, response, recovery and mitigation initiatives and programs for emergency management professionals, citizens and communities. For this reason, GOHSEP created several informational tools to educate our subrecipients in the various laws, rules, regulations and policies that apply to them.

It is important that when procuring any materials, goods or services with Federal funding that the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) be followed. This applies to all disaster and non disaster grants funded by FEMA – Preparedness, Hazard Mitigation (HM) and Public Assistance (PA) Grants. Failure to comply with Federal regulations when procuring with Federal funds has been the biggest reason the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS – OIG) has recommendations for deobligation of funding.

‍

General Rule

A Subrecipient (Applicant) is allowed to use its own procurement process as long as that process conforms to the Federal procurement requirements as stated above. When the Subrecipient’s (Applicant’s) process is not as stringent as the above, the Subrecipient (Applicant) must comply with the requirements of Federal regulations. Many times State law is more stringent than Federal regulations, in which case, the Subrecipient is required to apply State law to the procurement transaction.

‍

‍