Outer Burial Receptacles

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS <CFR>38 CFR Parts 38 and 39</CFR> <RIN>RIN 2900-AR82</RIN> <SUBJECT>Outer Burial Receptacles</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Veterans Affairs. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) proposes to revise its regulation that governs the outer burial receptacle (OBR) monetary allowance for burials in a VA national cemetery when a privately purchased OBR is used in lieu of a Government-furnished graveliner. First, VA proposes to expand applicability of the monetary allowance to burials in VA grant-funded State and Tribal cemeteries when a privately purchased OBR was used, or where an OBR is placed at the time of interment, at the cost of the State or Tribal Organization. Second, VA proposes to reimburse States and Tribal Organizations for OBRs that are pre-placed as part of a new construction or expansion grant project. In addition, VA proposes minor conforming revisions to its regulations governing aid for the establishment, expansion and improvement of veterans cemeteries to clarify that VA will reimburse the cost of preplaced OBRs separately from the grant award. These changes would implement new authorities provided in the Johnny Isakson and David P. Roe, M.D Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2020. VA also proposes to amend the regulation governing OBRs by removing retroactive provisions no longer needed because the relevant time period has passed. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before April 8, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Except as provided below, comments received before the close of the comment period will be available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> for public viewing, inspection, or copying, including any personally identifiable or confidential business information that is included in a comment. We post the comments received before the close of the comment period on the following website as soon as possible after they have been received: <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> VA will not post on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> public comments that make threats to individuals or institutions or suggest that the commenter will take actions to harm the individual. VA encourages individuals not to submit duplicative comments; however, we will post comments from multiple unique commenters even if the content is identical or nearly identical to other comments. Any public comment received after the comment period's closing date is considered late and will not be considered in the final rulemaking. In accordance with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023, a 100 word Plain-Language Summary of this proposed rule is available at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , under RIN 2900-AR82. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michelle Myers, Management and Program Analyst, Policy and Regulatory Service, National Cemetery Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, 810 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20420. Telephone: (720) 607-0364. (This is not a toll-free number.) </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 2306(e) of title 38, United States Code (U.S.C.), authorizes VA to provide an OBR for each new grave used for casketed remains in an open VA national cemetery. VA has implemented this authority in three ways: providing pre-placed OBRs as part of new construction or expansion of national cemeteries; installing a Government-furnished graveliner at the time of interment; and providing a monetary allowance for burials where the OBR was privately purchased. Pre-placed OBRs are installed in the ground during construction of a cemetery site, then covered with soil and grass. When needed for a burial, the area is unearthed, and the casket is placed. This allows for more efficient use of cemetery space, more efficient operations and improved appearance through the elimination of sunken graves. For gravesites where OBRs were not pre-placed during construction, VA may provide a graveliner at the time of interment. Typically, a Government-furnished graveliner placed at the time of interment is pre-cast concrete and maintains the integrity of the soil around the grave, eliminating sunken graves and improving cemetery appearance. In some cases, families choose to use a privately purchased OBR in lieu of a Government-furnished graveliner. Section 2306(e)(4) authorizes VA to use a voucher system or other system of reimbursement to pay for OBRs for burials in a VA cemetery, and in December 2000, VA first implemented regulations to administer this authority as a monetary allowance in 38 CFR 38.629 (65 FR 76937). <HD SOURCE="HD1">New Authority</HD> On January 5, 2021, sec. 2203 of Public Law 116-315, the Johnny Isakson and David P. Roe, M.D Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2020, amended section 2306(e) to expand applicability of the OBR program to burials in cemeteries that are the subject of a grant to a State or Tribal Organization under 38 U.S.C. 2408. To implement this new authority, VA proposes to revise § 38.629 to include provision of OBRs for gravesites in State or Tribal Organization cemeteries funded through VA grants. Specifically, we propose to redesignate paragraph (b) as paragraph (b)(1) and revise redesignated paragraph (b)(1) by adding language to the existing purpose statement to include payment of a monetary allowance for interments in grant-funded cemeteries where a privately purchased OBR has been used. As well, we propose adding new paragraphs (b)(2) and (3) to explain that the purpose of the section now also provides for payment of a monetary allowance for OBRs placed at the time of interment in grant-funded cemeteries and for reimbursement of the cost for OBRs that are pre-placed as part of construction, expansion, or improvement of a grant-funded cemetery. These amendments establish that VA will use § 38.629 to regulate both the monetary allowance and reimbursements associated with OBRs for burials in VA grantee-cemeteries. VA proposes minor revisions to the heading and text of paragraph (c) to clarify that the content of the paragraph refers to subsequent interments with privately purchased OBRs. In burials where a casket already exists in a grave with or without an OBR, subsequent placement of a second casket in an OBR would not be permitted in the same grave unless the cemetery director determines that the already interred casket would not be damaged. We propose replacing the current reference to “graveliner” in paragraph (c) with the broader term of “outer burial receptacle” to be more consistent with terminology used throughout the regulatory text. As well, we propose removing the word “national” to make the paragraph applicable to VA grant-funded cemetery directors, who now have responsibilities related to potential use of privately purchased OBRs. These revisions clarify the meaning and applicability of the paragraph. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Monetary Allowance for Privately Purchased OBRs</HD> VA proposes to revise the heading of paragraph (d) to specify that the provision refers to payment of monetary allowance for privately purchased OBRs and to redesignate paragraph (d) as paragraph (d)(1). VA proposes to add a new paragraph (d)(2) to specify provision of a monetary allowance for burials in a grant-funded cemetery where a privately purchased OBR was used. VA would require a request for payment from the person who paid for the OBR along with evidence of such payment. The request must be verified by the cemetery director where the burial occurred. Since this authority is effective, by law, on and after January 5, 2023, the revision would include the effective date. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Monetary Allowance for OBRs Placed at Time of Interment</HD> VA proposes to redesignate paragraph (e) as (f) and add new paragraph (e) to provide for payment of monetary allowance for OBRs placed at time of interment. VA would pay an allowance to a State or Tribal Organization for OBRs placed at the time of interment for burials in a grantee cemetery. Since this authority is effective, by law, on and after January 5, 2023, the revision would include the effective date. VA proposes to issue payment on a quarterly basis for the total number of burials that occurred during the quarter, when requested by the State or Tribal Organization on the approved VA application form. Since the monetary allowance for a single OBR is a relatively small amount, VA proposes a quarterly basis as a reasonable approach to minimize the number of applications for payment that need to be submitted by the States and Tribal Organizations and to allow for efficient management and processing of the requests by VA. Rather than requiring a separate application for each relevant interment, States and Tribal Organizations would submit one application for all OBRs used at time of interment during each quarter. In addition, proposed paragraph (e)(3) would establish that payment may not be made for burials where a fee for the OBR was charged to the decedent's family or other responsible party. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Reimbursement for OBRs Pre-Placed as Part of Construction</HD> VA proposes to add a new paragraph (g) to provide for reimbursement of the cost of OBRs that are pre-placed as part of new construction, expansion or improvement of a grant-funded cemetery. VA proposes to reimburse States and Tribal Organizations for the cost of pre-placed OBRs installed in conjunction with construction and expansion cemetery grants. States and Tribal Organizations would be required to submit a request for reimbursement using Standard Form 271, Outlay Report and Req ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━