OMB’s Uniform Grants Guidance Updates Take Effect Today, Empowering Communities and Workers

OMB’s Uniform Grants Guidance Updates Take Effect Today, Empowering Communities and Workers

by Valerie Lizárraga

Today, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s updates to the Uniform Grants Guidance released on April 4, 2024 officially go into effect. These are some of the most substantial changes to the Uniform Grants Guidance—which determines how states, localities, tribal governments, and other federal grantees can spend federal money—in decades.

A coalition of national and regional advocacy groups, labor unions, and community organizations, known as the Local Opportunities Coalition, for years led the efforts to advocate for updates to these federal grant guidelines and on April 4, 2024 the White House’s OMB announced the revisions to the Uniform Grants Guidance. These revisions include many of the coalition’s recommendations, which marks a historic step in transforming how communities can use the trillions in federal funds flowing to states and cities.

With local and state governments now able to attach strong worker and community benefits to their federally-funded projects, the revised guidance is poised to uplift workers and local communities by providing access to quality jobs that aid the transition to a green economy and address urgent climate issues.

The updates allow grantees to attach job quality, racial and gender equity incentives, and encourage private contractors to uplift local economies in public contracts. Some of the significant revisions in the updated Uniform Grants Guidance include:

  • Removing the ban on geographic preference so states and cities can prioritize workers and small businesses in their communities 
  • Allowing recipients of federal funds to advance family-sustaining jobs by rewarding bidders for job quality metrics such as wages and benefits, which can include implementing scoring mechanisms like Jobs to Move America’s U.S. Employment Plan 
  • Allowing for hiring efforts targeted to disadvantaged communities, including workers of color and women, to advance equity and access to quality jobs
  • Requiring federal grantees to conduct cost-benefit analyses before contracting out public services to private firms
  • Encouraging federal grantees to purchase goods and services from private contractors that emphasize environmentally sustainable practices and products

Now, local and state governments will have the ability to advance good jobs, equity, and community benefits in the public procurement process for federally-funded projects. We look forward to seeing how these changes will further maximize outcomes and benefits for communities, workers, and small businesses. 

Federal News Network Interview

Federal News Network Interview

Federal News Network’s Eric White spoke on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with the assistant director for policy at Jobs to Move America, Valerie Lizarraga, about the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s updates to the Uniform Grants Guidance. Listen to the interview here.

Reclaiming the Progressive Potential of Procurement

Reclaiming the Progressive Potential of Procurement

A longstanding misinterpretation of procurement law keeps cities and states from using federal money to advance local policy goals. JMA’s Madeline Janis and UCLA School of Law Professor of Legal Ethics Scott Cummings on how groups like the Local Opportunities Coalition are pushing the Biden admin to fix this. 

Read the article here.

Ensuring Federal Investments Benefit Workers and Communities

Ensuring Federal Investments Benefit Workers and Communities

by Michael Lawliss, JMA Senior Policy Coordinator

As states and cities begin to receive funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), President Biden signed off on two new laws that will continue the flow of federal funds to our communities. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act are landmark pieces of legislation that are likely to create hundreds of thousands of new, clean manufacturing jobs, helping us build critical domestic industries.

But we must ensure that we develop the economy of the future in an equitable way, providing opportunities for all. It will take additional federal and local action to make certain that the jobs created through these investments are good jobs that lift up workers and communities and address historic inequities. 

The IRA makes significant investments to fight climate change. Here are some of the highlights:

  • It makes historic climate investments through tax credits that incentivize renewable energy technology and clean transportation, including a $7,500 credit for consumers to purchase electric vehicles with batteries manufactured in North America. These investments are estimated to help our country reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030. 
  • It also includes $1 billion in grants for local governments to buy certain types of heavy-duty electric vehicles, including municipal vehicles and school buses. Jobs to Move America has been advocating for the electrification of school buses as an opportunity to give children clean air to breathe, lower carbon emissions, and create good union jobs in this emerging sector. 
  • It creates new manufacturing jobsby investing more than $60 billion in clean energy industries like battery production, solar panels, offshore wind turbines, heat pumps and recycling. Additional tax credits will help jump start these industries in the United States. 
  • It addresses historic inequities by investing $60 billion in programs related to environmental justice, including projects to address legacy pollution and bring clean energy technology to low-income and disadvantaged communities.

Meanwhile, CHIPS and the Science Act includes nearly $40 billion to grow the domestic supply chain of semiconductors—which are essential components of electronic devices, including those powering clean energy and transportation—and $11 billion to encourage research, development, and other workforce training initiatives within the industry. 

It’s encouraging to see so much federal investment, but we can’t stop there. There’s much more to be done to address climate change and stand with workers and communities that will most profoundly feel the impact of transitioning to clean energy.  

As we develop our domestic supply chain for electric vehicles, solar technologies, offshore wind components, and semiconductors, we will need to work together to make sure these are good jobs, and that mining to extract minerals needed for EV batteries is respectful of the environment, workers, and the communities where they operate. It is imperative that the Biden administration work with community groups, environmental organizations, and labor partners to create strong job quality standards attached to this funding.  

One change the Biden administration can make right now to center job quality in these investments is to update the Office of Management and Budget’s Uniform Guidance. Allowing states and cities to consider job quality metrics, like the number of U.S. jobs created, wages and benefits, training opportunities for workers, and targeted hiring policies, will help foster a “race to the top” when states and cities spend public funds. 

We look forward to working with the Biden administration on making sure these public investments benefit workers and communities and create good jobs with safe working conditions for those who need them the most.