It_Depends

Good call. It's this: Under the current CR, the first group of agencies is funded through March 1, 2024, and the remaining agencies are funded through March 8, 2024. So that solves that. Thanks.

First, let me caveat by saying that I know this is likely to be OBE in a few days but with the constant CR environment now, I can see this being an issue again in 6 months. Also, I've read through Ch 8 of the Redbook and the various posts on here and I can't quite find exactly this situation directly addressed. Someone higher in our agency put out guidance that CR funds could not be used for PoPs that start after the CR expiration date. This doesn't make sense to me, from what I understand the CR provides funding at the same rate of expenditure for appropriates programs/activities as the previous fiscal year. And that agencies may obligate the funds for the whole of the fiscal year provided their obligated in the same pattern they normally could. And that contracts with funds on them may continue work so long as appropriate monitoring is in the place in the event of shutdown. So, if we have a CR until 31 Dec and I have a severable services contract with an option exercise in October and my customer normally funds the whole year in October, I can exercise that option for the full amount and apply the full years funding and we're good to go. This guidance we got from higher up is putting a wrench in several actions. It started with an option exercise. The option gets exercised in April, my customer has mandated obligation goals, it is normal for us to exercise options early. Based on what in the Redbook, I agreed to exercise the option because it's a continuation of existing services being obligated in a matter that is consistent with past obligation patterns and if I could fund somehting for the full year if the option fell before the CR deadline, I don't see why I couldn't do the same with an option after the CR deadline. Nothing in the redbook talks about a prohibition on exercising options. But the funds certifiers will not certify the funds because of the higher guidance and because they say it violates CR which limits funding within the CR timeline. Similarly ran into a problem on a contract in which multiple customers use it and a customer has a start date of April for additional FTEs to be added. I can't contractually hold my contractor to provide the FTEs on the need date in April unless I modify the contract with funds one month in advance, but the funds certifiers won't cough up the money. At this point, me and my customers started pushing on the higher leadership guidance for rationale why we can't do this and are getting a lot of I don't knows, go talk to the legal office assigned to the contracting office. So I reached out to my legal office who's inital reaction was, if congress wanted you to spend money for April, they would have given you money for April, that's parking money. Talking with legal counsel this afternoon, because that's not at all what I'm tracking in the Redbook. Then it was a software license, the pop expires next week. Customer wants it executed this week in case there's a shut down because if we lapse in service the software company will shut off the license and we'll lose existing users data, incurring increased costs to turn it back on. When I went to the same attorney to request an IP review of the EULAs, they said, you can't award this anyway. And they've raised it to their cheif of counsel. So I'm fighting this fight with legal while my customer is fighting it with higher leadership. But does anyone have any regulation or case law that speaks to this directly?

If you're still looking, this old AT&L interview with Gansler has an infographic for the number of pages in the FAR from 1975 to 2011: https://asc.army.mil/web/access-the-new-gansler-report/