By Angela Sisco, RCAC RDS – Housing III
Requirements for Self-Help grantees to receive Department of Treasury’s Do Not Pay (DNP) clearance and report any single contract of $10,000 or more to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) have been re-emphasized in the new special Self-Help section of HB-1-3550, Appendix 13. Both the DOL notification and the DNP checks are completed through online portals. These are unrelated to SAM.gov and the notification and clearance checks are initiated by Self-Help grantees and completed in the portal by USDA RD, not by the grantees or subcontractors.
Do Not Pay for checking (Sub)Contractors
The DNP system checks for delinquency on any federal debt, among other things. This needs to be completed for any subcontractor with a contract for $25,000 or more. This is also done for the title company, the applicant, and the Self-Help housing grantee. Once submitted to RD, you will need to wait for clearance before entering into any contracts. If it is determined a subcontractor is on this list, you will be unable to award them the contract (or pay for any of their services using Section 502/federal funds). This is checked before entering into a contract and needs to be conducted again within five days prior to any payments being made for Custodial Accounts (disbursements from a Supervised Bank Account (SBA) are exempt). As a result, this may require a change in the way that you regularly execute contracts. If the Self-Help participants are reviewing bids and selecting subcontractors, you will need to request the DNP check once the contractor has been selected but prior to executing the contract. Once entered by USDA RD staff into the portal, DNP results are almost instantaneous. Additionally, you may want to include information about the DNP clearance requirements in your (sub)contracts.
Do Not Pay for Grantees
Before grant obligation, grant closing and at each draw, RD is required to check the grantee organizations TIN through DNP and its ‘principal’ members. Principal members are the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)/Director/Executive Director, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and any person who will be accepting/distributing the Federal Funds; plus, Chairman/President and Treasurer of the governing board. Prior to grant obligation and again before grant closing, the RD staff responsible for processing your Section 523 grant (re)application in the State office will send a request for the principal’s Social Security Numbers (SSN) for the DNP checks. These should be sent to the RD representative in a password protected document/email and the password should be sent in a separate email. RD will then maintain these for DNP clearance prior to any subsequent draw requests. If a principal member changes, you must notify your RD state representative and provide updated information and SSN’s before any future draws can be requested.
Reporting to DOL
This needs to be completed within 10 days of entering into any single contract or subcontract that will exceed $10,000 to a single homeowner. Group contracts exceeding $10,000 only require notification if the individual charge to any one homeowner exceeds the threshold. Once submitted to RD, you will not need to wait for any kind of response or “clearance” from RD or DOL. More information about Notification of Construction Contract Award and the DOL portal can be found here.
To request DNP and DOL notification, it is recommended that this be done simultaneously, when applicable, by providing the following to your state USDA RD office:
We submit the following information relative to a construction contract in excess of $10,000 per homeowner for DOL notification and/or $25,000 per homeowner for Do Not Pay clearance per RD Instruction 1901-E, Exhibit C, Rural Development Financed Contract:
Contractor’s Name:
Address:
Telephone Number:
Email:
EIN:
In addition, the below is required if you are submitting DOL notification:Contract for: (dollar amount)
Starting Date:
Completion Date:
Contract Number:
County/City/State:
DOL Region:
Also in this issue of Self-Help Builder:
