Rural Utilities Service February 24, 2011 – 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) 2011 subject to the availability of funding. This notice is being issued prior to passage of a final appropriations act to allow potential applicants time to submit proposals and give the Agency time to process applications within the current fiscal year. RUS will publish a subsequent notice identifying the amount received in the final appropriations act, if any. Expenses incurred in developing applications will be at the applicant's risk. For FY 2010, Congress appropriated approximately $30 million. In addition to announcing the application window, RUS announces the minimum and maximum amounts for DLT grants applicable for the fiscal year and a change in scoring necessitated by changes in the Empowerment Zone (EZ), Enterprise Community (EC) and Champion Community (CC) 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. Sec. 950aaa-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 part 1703, subpart E.