U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—Application of Fiscal Law to Other Transactions
B-333150 · gao · 2024-04-08
Summary
GAO (Comptroller General, 2024) appropriations-law decision, issued at the request of the HHS Inspector General, on how the recording statute and bona fide needs statute apply to three NIH/NHLBI Other Transaction Agreements funding medical research. GAO held that NHLBI violated the recording statute (31 U.S.C. § 1501) by recording obligations when it issued Notices of Award rather than when it signed the OTAs, and by over-recording restricted funds on the CureSCi agreement whose release was within the government's control, but that NHLBI complied with the bona fide needs statute because the OTAs functioned as federal-assistance instruments whose need is met when funds are awarded. Not a bid protest, it is a key fiscal-law treatment of OTs, holding that obligation-recording rules turn on which traditional instrument (contract, grant, or cooperative agreement) an OT most closely resembles.