Rural Utilities Service March 19, 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Rural Utilities Service (RUS), an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), announces its Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) grant program application window for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010. In addition to announcing the application window, RUS announces the anticipated amount of funding available, the minimum and maximum amounts for DLT grants applicable for the fiscal year, and a change in scoring necessitated by the expiration of the Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community (EZ/EC) designations. Finally, the Agency notes that the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Pub. L. 110-234) expressly added the category of libraries under Sec. 2333 (c)(1) of the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990 (7 U.S.C. S950aaa-2(a)(1)) in order to clearly establish that libraries are eligible to be recipients of DLT Loans and Grants. This confirms the longstanding Agency policy of considering libraries to be eligible entities under the DLT Program. The regulation for the DLT Grant Program can be found at 7 CFR 1703, subpart E.