Regulatory Services

The regulatory or rulemaking process is a powerful way to influence the real-world outcomes of laws passed by Congress, and is an important step to ensuring implementation is favorable to our client’s needs. TFG’s regulatory practice is built on a comprehensive understanding of agency policy and rulemaking processes. TFG professionals have been working with, or have served as, senior staff at federal and state agencies for decades. We use this experience to devise and implement innovative solutions and strategies to achieve effective regulatory outcomes for our clients, and, among other things, put you face-to-face with program officers and decision-makers within key agencies to advocate for your interests.

Why Choose TFG?

  • Develop and submit comments on agency rulemakings, guidance, proposed rules, interim final rules, advisory documents, policy manuals, supplemental proposed rules, and amendatory language
  • Advocate at federal agencies, the Executive Office of the President, the Office of Management and Budget, and Congress
  • Devise innovative solutions for our client’s regulatory challenges
  • Track and monitor regulations and policies
  • Research and analyze agency rules, regulations, policies, and objectives

Case Studies

4F Waiver

TFG worked with the Transportation Corridor Agencies to secure a legislative fix to a 4F regulatory hurdle that prohibited transportation projects funded with federal dollars from having an adverse impact on parks and historic properties. Without the waiver, a multi-billion dollar toll road would have either been stopped in its entirety or incurred significant delays and legal expenses. Working with House and Senate Committees, the Department of Transportation, the Trust for Historic Preservation, and national environmental groups, TFG and its client crafted a provision in federal transportation authorization legislation that permitted an exception to the law when both a park facility and the highway are identified in the same planning process and meant to coexist. The legislative fix avoided construction delays and costly litigation.

Executive Order on FFRMS

In January 2015, the Obama Administration issued Executive Order 13690, which updates the original 1977 Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS) Executive Order to help reduce the risk and cost of future flood disasters by requiring future federally-funded investments in and around floodplains to adopt higher flood standards. TFG worked to educate its local government clients on the impacts of the Executive Order on their federally-funded projects and ensured Congress and the Administration understood the impacts of the new requirements on local communities. TFG continues to work with clients through the implementation of the Executive Order and will continue to ensure that local governments in the floodplain are not unfairly burdened by the new requirements.

EPA Integrated Planning

TFG has worked on behalf of the TFG-managed Perfect Storm Communities Coalition (PSC) to advocate for a regulatory approach consistent with the Clean Water Act (CWA) that provides local governments the flexibility needed to meet major regulatory challenges in a more cost-effective way. These efforts resulted in the release of EPA's Integrated Planning Framework, which allows a municipality to meet multiple CWA requirements by identifying efficiencies from separate wastewater and stormwater programs and sequencing investments so that the highest priority projects are addressed first, saving municipalities significant time and ratepayer resources. TFG continues to work with PSC to advocate for the codification of EPA Integrated Planning Framework and increased flexibility in meeting CWA obligations.

Services & Issue Areas of Expertise

Transportation

Transportation

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Broadband & Telecommunications

Broadband & Telecommunications

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Economic & Community Development/Housing

Economic & Community Development/Housing

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Environment & Sustainability

Environment & Sustainability

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Health Care & Social Services

Health Care & Social Services

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Public Safety

Public Safety

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Disaster Preparedness & Recovery

Disaster Preparedness & Recovery

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Flood Issues

Flood Issues

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Water Resources

Water Resources

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US Congressional Calendar

Jennifer Imo Discusses Earmarks, Federal Funding in Bloomberg Government

Today, Jennifer Imo, TFG’s Managing Partner of Client Services, shared insights from her ten years of experience securing earmarked funds.

View the full article below:

Lobbyists Temper Expectations for Clients Seeking Earmark Boom

  • Members ask tougher questions than before 2011, lobbyist says
  • Museum funding has potential for political risk, Kingston says

By Jack Fitzpatrick / June 9, 2022 05:05AM ET / Bloomberg Government

Washington lobbyists are telling clients seeking congressional earmarks to temper their expectations, look to senior appropriators for help, and weigh the political appeal of their requests as lawmakers prepare for a second year of earmarks after a 10-year hiatus.

While lawmakers are preparing for an increase in earmark funding in fiscal 2023, K Street observers say local governments, nonprofits, and other clients should keep their expectations in check and make sure they can demonstrate strong political support for their requests.

The lack of agreement on top-line spending figures and the upcoming midterm elections make for an uncertain outlook in the coming year, they say. Lawmakers are also more sensitive about avoiding politically embarrassing earmarks than they used to be, according to Brent Heberlee, a lobbyist at Ballard Spahr LLP.

“The Appropriations Committee is not afraid to ask difficult questions about a given project,” Heberlee said in a phone interview. “We really didn’t see that a decade or more ago. Projects went in and the committee took them at face value, for the most part.”

 

Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg

House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) speaks during a news conference at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on May 17.

Individual lawmakers are also being more scrupulous than they used to be rather than relying on the committees to filter out bad requests, according to Jennifer Imo, managing partner of client services at The Ferguson Group.

“In the past, members would just throw everything at the subcommittee and just see what stuck,” Imo said in a phone interview.

Lawmakers routinely added earmarks to spending bills until they were banned in 2011, when Republicans took control of the House following the 2010 Tea Party wave election. Lawmakers brought them back in the fiscal 2022 appropriations bills, with more restrictions.

For-profit entities aren’t eligible for earmarks, lawmakers must post their requests on their websites, and earmarks are limited to 1% of discretionary spending. Lawmakers operated carefully in the fiscal 2022 legislation (Public Law 117-103) signed in March, including $9.7 billion in earmarks — far less than the $15 billion that would have equated to 1% of discretionary funding.

For more on fiscal 2022 earmarks: Colleges, Cops, Airports Among Earmark Winners in 2022 Funding

There may be more earmark funding available in fiscal 2023. House appropriators allowed members to submit 15 requests each, up from 10 in fiscal 2022. And House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said there’s been an increase in requests. In total, 344 members submitted earmark requests for the upcoming bills, according to a list published by the House Appropriations Committee.

“There are increasing numbers coming in,” DeLauro said at a hearing last month. “Let me just put it this way: We’re going to do the best we can to see how many that we can get done this go ‘round, because we understand the value, and we understand the need.”

Lawmakers Dial Up Earmark Scrutiny

Those requesting earmarks shouldn’t bank on a huge influx of money, said Heberlee, who represents local governments and nonprofits.

“The project may have substantial needs for funding, but we counsel clients that this is not the ‘be all, end all’ for your project,” Heberlee said.

Clients can help their chances of getting federal funds if they exceed the typical grant requirements for state or local matching funds, which demonstrates strong local political support, said Imo, who’s also federal director of the National Association of Towns and Townships.

It helps to seek funding that would push a project across the finish line, rather than start a new project. Members see a political advantage in securing funds for a nearly finished project, Imo added.

“They like to cut the ribbon,” she said.

Those requesting earmarks also shouldn’t expect to receive multiple years of funding, unlike in previous eras, according to Rich Gold, who leads Holland & Knight’s Public Policy & Regulation Group.

“There really was a philosophy in the olden days that you could take a $10 million road project and get three years of funding and get it done,” Gold said in a phone interview. “Members don’t seem interested in that, and the committees really don’t want to get into that.”

Lawmakers will also reject projects that don’t have clear political support from multiple levels, said Jack Kingston, a lobbyist at Squire Patton Boggs and a former Republican lawmaker from Georgia who served on the House Appropriations Committee. Members who include an earmark in a spending bill want to be able to tell skeptical local journalists, “Call Mayor Jones, call County Supervisor Smith, call the commander at the military installation,” Kingston said.

Midterms Cloud Prospects

The midterm elections add uncertainty to the outlook for fiscal 2023. Republicans were divided over whether to participate in the new earmarking process, ultimately leaving it up to individual members to decide. GOP leaders will likely coordinate closely with top Republican appropriators to make sure no politically embarrassing measures make it past the committee, Kingston said.

Lawmakers avoided political pitfalls in the first year of the new earmark system, but they’ll need to be careful as colleagues submit more requests. In some cases, lawmakers included earmarks in the fiscal 2022 spending package that could garner negative press — fairly or unfairly, Kingston said.

Funding for small museums could be risky, because they sound obscure and trivial, and “that’s the kind of article that newspapers like to write,” Kingston said. The fiscal 2022 spending package included funding for small or niche museums such as the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, the Old Stone House Museum in Vermont, and the National Atomic Testing Museum in Nevada.

The first year of the new earmarking system showed how important it is to seek help from senior appropriators, Kingston said, pointing to Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Vice Chair Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

“In a huge budget like ours, there are hidden corridors of money, untapped veins of funding that people don’t know about unless they’ve been there for a while,” Kingston said.

Learning the top priorities of individual members is especially important when seeking earmarked funding, Imo said.

Lobbyists have also learned to pitch funding to lawmakers in a way that aligns with their ideology — a much different process than when executive branch bureaucrats make the final funding decisions for grants.

If seeking funding for a road project that runs through both Republican and Democratic districts, Democrats would look for “traffic-calming that reduces greenhouse gas emissions,” while Republicans would be interested in “economic development to help businesses along the corridor,” Gold said.

“It’s almost like you’re speaking French to one office and Spanish to another,” Gold said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Fitzpatrick in Washington at jfitzpatrick@bgov.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giuseppe Macri at gmacri@bgov.com; Loren Duggan at lduggan@bgov.com

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Latest TFG News

28 January 2025

TFG Monitoring Developments of Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs

On January 27, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President Trump issued a memorandum titled “Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs.” The directive mandates Federal agencies to temporarily suspend the obligation and disbursement of federal financial assistance while conducting a comprehensive review of programs and awards to ensure alignment with the administration’s policies and priorities. As part of this review, agencies are also instructed to temporarily suspend the issuance of new program solicitations.

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Nicole Sibilski

Nicole Sibilski

Senior Grants Specialist

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