User Fees for Agricultural Quarantine and Inspection Services

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 354</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. APHIS-2022-0023]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0579-AE71</RIN> <SUBJECT>User Fees for Agricultural Quarantine and Inspection Services</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We are amending the user fee regulations associated with the agricultural quarantine and inspection (AQI) program. Specifically, we are adjusting the fees for certain AQI services that are provided in connection with certain commercial vessels, commercial trucks, commercial railroad cars, commercial aircraft, and international passengers arriving at ports in the customs territory of the United States or precleared or preinspected at a site outside the customs territory of the United States; adjusting the caps on prepaid fees associated with commercial trucks and commercial railroad cars; and removing certain fee exemptions that are no longer justifiable based upon pathway analyses of risk. We are also revising requirements pertaining to remittances and statements. Specifically, we will require monthly rather than quarterly remittances for the commercial aircraft fee, international air passenger fee, and international cruise passenger fee, clarify our requirements, and provide for electronic payments and statements. We are also including in the regulations information on agents responsible for ensuring compliance with paying the user fees and the requirement for entities to notify the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in the event they have a change in personnel responsible for fee payments. These changes are necessary to recover the costs of the current level of AQI activity, to account for actual and projected increases in the cost of doing business, to increase fee payer accountability, and to more accurately align fees with the costs associated with each fee service. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective October 1, 2024, except for the removal of section § 354.3(e)(2)(iv), which is effective on April 1, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. George Balady, Senior Regulatory Policy Specialist, PPQ, APHIS, 4700 River Road, Unit 36, Riverdale, MD 20737; (301) 851-2338; <E T="03">aqi.user.fees@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">• Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ General Issues</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Economic Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Revisions to Regulatory Definitions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Vessels</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Trucks</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Railroad Cars</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Aircraft</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ International Passengers Arriving at Airports and Seaports</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ AQI Treatment Monitoring</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Records Retention</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Severability</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">• Executive Orders 12866, 13563 and 14094, and Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Air Passengers</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Aircraft</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Small Aircraft Exemption</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Vessels</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Canadian Barge Exemption</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Trucks</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Commercial Railroad Cars</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ International Cruise Vessel Passengers</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">○ Treatment Monitoring </FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 2509(a) of the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade (FACT) Act of 1990 (21 U.S.C. 136a) authorizes the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to prescribe and collect user fees for agricultural quarantine and inspection (AQI) services. Congress amended the FACT Act on April 4, 1996, and May 13, 2002. The FACT Act, as amended, authorizes APHIS to prescribe and collect user fees for AQI services provided in connection with the arrival, at a port in the customs territory of the United States, of certain commercial vessels, commercial trucks, commercial railroad cars, commercial aircraft, and international passengers. According to the FACT Act, as amended, these user fees should be “sufficient” “to cover the cost of”: • Providing AQI services “in connection with the arrival at a port in the customs territory of the United States” of the conveyances and the passengers listed above; • Providing “preclearance or preinspection at a site outside the customs territory of the United States” to the conveyances and the passengers listed above; and • Administering 21 U.S.C. 136a, concerning the “collection of fees for inspection services.” In addition, the FACT Act, as amended, contains the following requirements: • The amount of the fees shall be “commensurate with the costs of [AQI] services with respect to the class of persons or entities paying the fees.” • The cost of AQI services “with respect to passengers as a class” shall “include the cost of related inspections of the aircraft or other vehicle.” The user fees for the AQI activities described above are contained in 7 CFR 354.3, “User fees for certain international services.” APHIS' regulations regarding user fees relating to imports and exports, as well as overtime services, are found in 7 CFR part 354. On August 11, 2023, we published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (88 FR 54796-54827, Docket No. APHIS-2022-0023) a proposal  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> to amend the user fee regulations by adjusting the fees for certain AQI services that are provided in connection with certain commercial vessels, commercial trucks, commercial railroad cars, commercial aircraft, and international passengers arriving at ports in the customs territory of the United States; adjusting the caps on prepaid fees associated with commercial trucks and commercial railroad cars; removing certain fee exemptions that are no longer justifiable based upon pathway analyses of risk; and restructuring the treatment monitoring fee. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  To view the proposed rule, supporting documents, and the comments we received, go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Enter APHIS-2022-0023 in the Search field. </FTNT> We also proposed to revise requirements pertaining to remittances and statements. Specifically, we proposed to require monthly rather than quarterly remittances for the commercial aircraft fee, international air passenger fee, and international cruise passenger fee, clarify our requirements, and provide for electronic payments and statements. We also proposed to include in the regulations information on agents responsible for ensuring compliance with paying the user fees and the requirement for entities to notify APHIS in the event they have a change in personnel responsible for fee payments. We proposed these changes to recover the costs of the current level of AQI activity, to account for actual and projected increases in the cost of doing business, to increase fee payer accountability, and to more accurately align fees with the costs associated with each fee service. We solicited comments concerning our proposal for 60 days ending October 10, 2023. We received 70 comments by that date. They were from airlines, shipping companies, treatment providers, industry associations, and private citizens. Eighteen commenters generally supported the proposed rule, while 15 generally opposed it. The remaining commenters, while commenting on the provisions of the proposed rule, did not articulate a position in favor or against it. The comments are discussed below by topic. Based on the comments that we received, we have made the following modifications to the proposed rule in this final rule: • We have lowered the fees for commercial vessels, commercial aircraft, and international air passengers based on our determination that, while aggregate cost was correct (the numerator for the fee rate), there were more instances in which AQI services were provided in these modes (the denominator for the fee rate) than we had initially calculated. • We have established a commercial vessel fee specific to commercial vessels operating within the Great Lakes or in the region along the coastline from Alaska to Oregon, provided that certain conditions are met. • We have decided not to revise our regulations governing the treatment monitoring fee at this time. • We have decided not to specify the method by which airlines and cruise ships must refund passenger user fees assessed for trips not taken. <HD SOURCE="HD2">General Issues</HD> Several commenters who supported the proposed rule agreed with the proposed rule that additional personnel were needed at ports of entry to reduce workload on individual employees. One of these commenters stated that port personnel at certain ports of entry currently routinely must work overtime to conduct inspections. As we stated in the proposed rule, the increased fees will provide for additional staffing at ports of entry. One of these commenters also said that APHIS' regulations governing reimbursable overtime also needed to be updated. Changes to APHIS' regulations governing reimbursable overtime are outside of the scope of this rulemaking. However, we do note that our user fee model did consider staffing at ports in order to address the staffing shortages highlighted by the commenter and reduce the need for individual employees to work overtime to conduct inspections. We discuss the staffing model at greater length below. Several commenters, while supportive of the proposed rule, took the view that the regulations imposed a protective ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 222k characters. 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