Several cities and villages in Michigan and across the country have experienced issues revalidating their SAM.gov account. Many of these issues stem from local governments being asked upload documents such as articles/certificate of incorporation to SAM.gov. For older municipalities, getting the original articles of incorporation might be a challenge.

We have been able to work with the National League of Cities, and they have since heard from the General Services Administration (GSA) on this. Here is what the GSA has advised.

“If the entity name and physical address have not changed since the last renewal and the registration is still active, there is an available option to select, “I affirm this is my entity’s current, correct legal business name and address” on the incident form. This allows the user to be able to proceed with renewing their registration. To be clear, the user will still need to attach documentation that proves the current, correct business information, and submit the incident, but it won’t hold up the registration. I have also been advised that a new system change implemented later this month will allow state and local entities to continue with their registration if they cannot get a match for their year of incorporation. We hope this helps alleviate this issue.”

Why is this important? Treasury’s SLFRF FAQ 11.4 states that a requirement for an SLFRF payment includes “maintaining an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) (https://www.sam.gov).”

We hope this helps addresses the concerns you may have and thank you for your patience as we worked through this with NLC and GSA.

John LaMacchia is the League’s director of state & federal affairs. He can be reached at [email protected] or 517-908-0303.