Women's Bureau Grant Justification

Funding Opportunity Announcement

Paid Leave Analysis

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the Paid Leave Analysis Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) that will solicit applications for FY 2015 Paid Leave Analysis grant program.

More specifically, the FOA will announce the availability of approximately $1 million in grant funds. The Women’s Bureau (WB) within the Department expects to award approximately six to ten grants of up to $167,000 each.¹ Funds provided under this grant program will be FY 2015 funds, and the budget for this program will not exceed $1 million.

This grant program is intended to support research and analysis needed to explore, develop, implement and/or improve paid family and medical leave programs at the State and municipal² levels, as well as in U.S. Territories and Possessions and federally recognized Indian/Native American Tribes. Paid family and medical leave programs help workers with caregiving responsibilities remain in the workforce, and have been shown to improve health outcomes for children, ill adults, and seniors. Such programs have also been shown to increase workplace productivity and worker recruitment and retention. Although the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides job-protected leave for eligible workers to care for their newborn or adopted children, their seriously ill family members, and their own serious health conditions, the FMLA does not require that such leave be paid. In recent years, a few states and several municipalities have implemented their own, paid family and medical leave programs to ensure that workers have the economic security to care for themselves and their family members.

With this grant program, the Department is taking a critical step toward helping jurisdictions throughout the United States build the administrative infrastructure necessary to meet the realities of today’s working families while also bolstering the Nation’s long-term economic success.

Grants issued through this program must be used to carry out research and analysis activities that fall into at least one of the following four categories:

• Statistical analysis, such as feasibility, cost-benefit, or actuarial studies;

• Economic-impact analysis;

• Financing, eligibility and benefit modeling;

• Education, outreach and marketing analysis for implementation purposes.³

To be eligible for funds under this grant program, an applicant must be a government entity from one of the following levels of government: State; County; City or Township; U.S. Territory or Possession; federally recognized Indian/Native American Tribe. In addition, the applicant’s jurisdiction must have an estimated population of at least 50,000 residents. Satisfaction of these criteria will be verified prior to award.

Applicants must:

• Present a clear description of the research and analysis activities they intend to conduct and identify the anticipated deliverables from such activities;

• Explain how such activities and deliverables will advance their efforts to explore, develop, implement and/or improve a paid family and medical leave program within their jurisdiction; and

• Outline a solid financial infrastructure that demonstrates proper resource management.

Applicants must also commit to sharing any knowledge and promising practices gleaned from their research and analysis with non-participating jurisdictions at forthcoming events.

The WB expects the period of performance for these grants to be one year, starting in September 2015; grantees will be required to submit quarterly financial and programmatic narratives. Additionally, full participation (by grantee and sub-grantees) in any evaluation initiated by DOL is a condition of all grant awards.

Applications will include the following information collections: (1) Form SF-424 (“Application for Federal Assistance”), separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004, and Form SF-424A (“Budget Information Form”), separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0007; (2) Project Budget Narrative; (3) Project Narrative; and (4) Abstract.

Electronic availability:

The FOA will be available electronically at: http://www.grants.gov/. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates that 80 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This FOA implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

Based on past experience, the DOL expects to receive approximately ten applications from an equal number of respondents. ETA estimates public reporting burden for the information collection to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

10 applications x 20 hours = 200 hours.

DOL has increased the February 2015, average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $25.03 by 40 percent (total $35.04) to monetize this burden. See The Employment Situation—April 2015, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_05082015.pdf, at 32.

200 hours x $35.04 = $7,008.

DOL associates no other cost burdens with this information collection. In addition to the application, each grantee will be required to submit quarterly financial reports to ETA, as well as quarterly performance and narrative reports to the WB. These information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 10 respondents, 10 responses, 200 hours, $0 other cost burdens.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

1 DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) is responsible for the grant award process of this WB grant program.

2 As used throughout the FOA and in connection with the Women’s Bureau Paid Leave Analysis grant program, the term “municipal” and its variants refer to the general purpose political subdivisions of a State, including County, City and Township Governments.

3 Note that this grant program funds certain categories of research and analysis activities. It does not require grantees to enact a paid family and medical leave program, and receipt of funds under this grant program is not contingent upon a potential grantee’s agreement to do so.

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