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Understanding the legal time limits for appropriated federal funds * is is integral to proper and efficient award management of financial assistance awards. A substantial percentage of funding used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's financial assistance programs is from the annual Resource Management resource management appropriation set by Congress, so a good grasp of this concept is important.
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Each year Congress passes an appropriations bill which authorizes the federal government to expend public funds in specified ways. This a constitutional requirement, often referred to as the ‘power of the purse’, which means the federal government cannot spend federal funding without express congressional approval. Within the annual appropriations bill are the time limits Congress establishes for expenditure of the specified funds. This is referred to as the ‘period of availability’***** [1] or 'period of obligational availability'.****[2]
Unless otherwise stated in the bill, appropriations are good for one federal fiscal year. That means those funds must be properly expended by the relevant governmental entity by the end of the current federal fiscal year. Some appropriations have longer or shorter periods of availability, specifically determined in the bill. For example, Resource Management funds appropriated to FWS are authorized for two-year periods of availability.
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An appropriation account expires “[a]t midnight on the last day of an appropriation’s period of availability” and is “no longer available for incurring new obligations.”41 However, an expired appropriation “remains available for 5 years for the purpose of paying obligations incurred prior to the account’s expiration and adjusting obligations that were previously unrecorded or under recorded.”42 Following the five-year period, the account is closed, and “[a]ny remaining balance (whether obligated or unobligated) in the account shall be cancelled and shall thereafter not be available for obligation or expenditure for any purpose.”43 This means that the funds are “returned to the general fund of the Treasury.”44 “Collections authorized or required to be credited to ... [the] appropriation account, but not received before closing of the account ... shall be deposited in the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts.”45 In the event that obligations or adjustments to obligations that should have been charged to an account are discovered after the account is closed, they “may be charged to any current appropriation account of the agency available for the same purpose” as the closed account as long as they are “not chargeable to any current appropriation account of the agency.”46 Congress may exempt appropriations from these rules through specific legislation.47
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References
(1) https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/5538/text
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