House passes Kennedy-backed bill to bring transparency to Louisianians about grants process

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives passed the Grant Transparency Act, a bill that Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) cosponsored. It now moves to the Senate for consideration.

The Grant Transparency Act would require government agencies to give Americans who apply for competitive grant applications more information about the selection process.

"The Grant Transparency Act would shed light on how the government chooses which Louisianians receive or don't receive competitive grants. Now that the House has passed this critically important bill, I urge my Senate colleagues to do the same to bring clarity to the process," said Kennedy.

"Grant applicants often don't have enough information to know why they are not awarded a competitive grant despite meeting all of the criteria. The Grant Transparency Act would require government agencies to shine a light on how they decide between applicants behind closed doors, and I urge my colleagues to support it," said Cornyn, who introduced the bill.

The legislation would require a Notice of Funding Opportunities for competitive grants to include a description of selection criteria, a statement from the agency about whether it used a weighted scoring method for the competitive grant and any other approach the agency used to evaluate the applicants.

Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) also cosponsored the bill.

The full bill text is available here.