16 U.S.C. § 838i — Bonneville Power Administration fund

(a) Establishment; composition; availability of transferred funds for expenditures. The United States Treasury must have a Bonneville Power Administration fund, which this chapter refers to hereinafter as the “fund.” The fund consists of: (1) all cash receipts, collections, and recoveries of the Administrator from all sources, including trust funds; (2) all proceeds from the Administrator’s sale of bonds; (3) any appropriations that Congress makes for the fund; and (4) these funds, which are transferred to the Administrator: (i) all money in the special Treasury account established under Executive Order Numbered 8526, dated August 26, 1940; (ii) the unspent balances in the continuing fund established under section 832j of this title; and (iii) the unspent balances of funds appropriated or otherwise made available for the Bonneville Power Administration. All funds transferred under this subsection may be spent by the Secretary of Energy, acting through the Administrator, as authorized in this chapter and in any other Act relating to the Federal Columbia River transmission system. This spending is subject to limits prescribed by any applicable appropriation act during the period between the transfer and Congress’s approval of the Administrator’s first later annual budget program. (b) Authorized purposes of expenditures. The Administrator may spend money from the fund without another appropriation and without a fiscal-year limit if the spending was included in the Administrator’s annual budget submitted to Congress. The spending must follow specific directions or limits in appropriation acts and must be for a purpose necessary or appropriate to perform the Administrator’s duties under law. These purposes include, but are not limited to: (1) constructing, acquiring, and replacing— (i) the transmission system, including facilities and structures belonging with it; and (ii) additions, improvements, and betterments to that system. The transmission system is hereinafter in this chapter referred to as the “transmission system.” (2) operating, maintaining, repairing, and relocating the transmission system, to the extent that subsection (1) above does not provide for the relocation; (3) electrical research, development, experimentation, testing, and investigation related to constructing, operating, and maintaining transmission systems and facilities; (4) marketing electric power; (5) transmitting power over other people’s facilities and renting, leasing, or lease-purchasing facilities; (6) buying electric power, including the entitlement to electric plant capability— (i) on a short-term basis to meet temporary shortages of electric power that the Administrator is required by contract to supply; (ii) if the purchase was previously authorized or is made with money Congress expressly appropriated for that purchase; (iii) if other entities provide the money for the purchase under a trust or agency arrangement; or (iv) on a short-term basis to meet the Administrator’s obligations under section 4(h) of the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act (16 U.S.C. 839b(h)); (7) paying emergency expenses or ensuring continuous operation; (8) paying interest, premiums, discounts, and any expenses connected with issuing bonds under section 838k(a) of this title, and paying the principal of all such bonds, including providing and maintaining reserve and other funds established in connection with those bonds; (9) making payments to the credit of the reclamation fund or other funds when law requires or directs those payments in connection with reclamation projects in the Pacific Northwest. However, this clause does not permit revenues to be used to repay costs allocated to irrigation at a project unless another law expressly authorizes that use; (10) making payments to the Treasury’s miscellaneous receipts for all unpaid costs that law requires or directs to be charged to and returned to the Treasury’s general fund to repay the Federal investment in the Federal Columbia River Power System from electric power marketed by the Administrator; (11) acquiring goods and services and paying dues and membership fees to professional, utility, industry, and other societies, associations, and institutes, along with expenses related to those memberships. This includes, but is not limited to, the acquisitions and payments listed in the general provisions of the annual appropriations Act for the Department of Energy, when the Administrator determines they are necessary or appropriate to carry out this chapter’s purposes; and (12) making payments required to carry out the purposes and provisions of the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act (16 U.S.C. 839 et seq.). (c) Restriction on use of expenditures to authorized purposes; expenditures of money received in trust; applicability of provisions relating to control of Government corporations. Money that was or is appropriated may be used only for the purposes for which it was appropriated. Money the Administrator receives in trust may be used only to carry out that trust. Chapter 91 of title 31 applies to the Administrator in the same way it applies to the wholly owned Government corporations named in section 9101 of title 31. But section 9105(d) of title 31 does not affect the powers granted in subsection (b)(11) of this section or in sections 832a(f), 832i(b), and 832k(a) of this title. (d) Audit of financial transactions by Comptroller General; report to Congress. Despite sections 9105 and 9106 of title 31, the Comptroller General must audit the Administrator’s financial transactions at the times and to the extent the Comptroller General considers necessary. The Comptroller General must report the results of each audit to Congress within 6½ months after the end of the fiscal year covered by the audit.