One hoop our political entities jump through trying to recover
money from the state and federal government is the grant system. As
far as I know, Ulysses S. Grant, the former President of the United
States (1869-1877), did not invent the grant system; however, the
system is so antiquated that if he had invented it, no one would be
surprised.
One hoop our political entities jump through trying to recover money from the state and federal government is the grant system. As far as I know, Ulysses S. Grant, the former President of the United States (1869-1877), did not invent the grant system; however, the system is so antiquated that if he had invented it, no one would be surprised.
As explained on www.grants.gov “a grant is not a benefit or entitlement.” It is an award of financial assistance from a federal agency to carry out a public purpose authorized by a law. San Benito County recently applied for a $400,000 Community Development Block Grant called CDBG (cee-dee-bee-gee). I guess all the good acronyms were taken so the government just went to unpronounceable letter combinations for a short title.  Â
It’s true that while “a grant is not a benefit or entitlement” some grants are reserved for “Entitlement Communities” who are entitled to those grants; I guess their understanding of the word entitlement differs from mine. As a resident of San Benito County you do not have to worry about it – there are many Entitlement Communities in the nation, but we are not one of them. We’re called a non-entitlement community, which means two important things – one is that we have to compete for the CDBG funding; the second is that the state gets to manage the program.
Last week county Deputy Director of Community Services & Workforce Development Enrique Arreola presented the huge county CDBG application to the board of supervisors for final comments before it went off to the state. He later estimated it at 1,200 pages and it looked like it weighed 12 pounds. We were asking for $333 per page. Let’s hope it cost us less than $333 per page to put all the mandatory application information together. Part of the discussion was a mini-Monty Python skit about the state’s failure to supply the certification letter for the housing element that is required accompany the application. We needed that so we could send it all back to – you guessed it – the state. Not surprisingly, it appears one state office may not know how to contact another state office or perhaps their computer systems are incompatible.
I checked the 185 pages of application instructions California supplied and only got to Step 3, “Required Number of Complete Applications: Two (2)” before I was in bureaucratic hell. It said, “One complete original set (with original signatures, in blue ink) of the entire application and all attachments.” Blue was not only underlined, it was displayed in blue, so you could not miss it.
The requirement for blue inked original signatures appeared eight more times in the instructions including next to the signature blocks and in this ominous warning, “The Authorized Representative’s signature must be in blue ink.” Yes, the word “must” was in bold font and the word “blue” was in blue.
The only thing I can think of was that the requirement was written before color copiers or printers existed and the government thought it was more difficult to forge a blue signature. Copiers now easily forge an old $20 bill, so they are slightly behind the times.
If you assume it has to do with originals and copies think again, they also require that you “clearly label the “Original” and the “Copy”. Naturally you must also, “Ensure that the Original application contains all original signatures on the appropriate forms and that they are signed in blue ink.” By golly, they demand we use blue ink and that is that, they will spare no expense to remind us.
People are out of work, out of their homes and some of them are out of hope, but some federal or state bureaucrat is prepared to reject a grant request because the signatures are not in blue ink. Do you want to know why people have no respect for government – there is your answer. We should identify the culprits and fire them then, as a token of our appreciation, give each a pen loaded with blue ink when they leave.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.
