State Grant FOA Justification

Federal Opportunity Announcement for Grant Applications

Control Number 1225-0086

State Assistance Grants Justification

Abstract:

The U.S. Department of Labor ( DOL), Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), is making $8.441 million available to award grants under section 503 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 to State or State-designated entities to:

1. assist States in developing and enforcing mining laws and regulations;

2. improve State workmen’s compensation and occupational disease laws and programs related to coal or other mine employment; and

3. promote Federal-State coordination and cooperation in improving the health and safety conditions in mines.

MSHA could award as many as 50 separate grants.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov website. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates 90 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 information collection complies with 5 CFR 1320.5

State Grants, Applications

For the State Assistance grants, DOL would normally expect to receive 50 applications.

Public reporting burden for each grant application is estimated to average 10 hours per response for reviewing instructions; searching existing data sources; gathering and maintaining the data needed; completing and reviewing the collection of information; and to prepare and submit an application in response to a FOA. For purposes of this information collection request, the DOL assumes that a professional earning $46.54¹ per hour will prepare an application. Therefore, the burden for these reporting activities is as follows using average response times:

Responses: 50 FOA applications (50 respondents x 1 per respondent)

Burden Hours: 50 FOA applications * 10 hours/application = 500 hours

Burden Cost: 500 hours * $46.54 = $23,270

State Grants, Reports

Each recipient who receives a grant award notice will be required to submit nine progress reports to MSHA. Each report will take approximately two and half hours to prepare.

Responses: 450 Responses (50 awards x 9 reports per award)

Burden Hours: 450 Reports * 2.5 hours/report = 1,125 hours

Burden Cost: 1,125 hours * $46.54 = $52,358

State Grants, Total Burden

Total Responses: 500 Responses (50 + 450)

Total Burden Hours: 1,625 hours (500 + 1,125)

Burden Cost: $75,628 ($23,270 + $52,358)

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection.

Total burden: 50 respondents (unduplicated), 500 responses; 1,625 hours; $0 other cost burden.

Supporting Statement B; Statistical Methods

There are no statistical methods.

1 Most recently available mean hourly wage of a United States “11-9151 Social and Community Service Manager” as reported by the 2014 Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2014) http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/print.pl/oes/current/oes119151.htm is $32.56. The reported mean value is increased for the annual change in employment costs (2.1%) as reported by BLS using series CIU3010000100000I (state and local management workers total compensation) qtr. 2 2014 to qtr. 2 2015, at http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv and 40% for fringe benefits ($32.56 * 1.021 * 1.4 = $46.54).

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