Special Uses; Land Use Fees; Temporary Land Use Fee Reductions for Recreation Residence Permits

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Forest Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>36 CFR Parts 214 and 251</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0596-AD56</RIN> <SUBJECT>Special Uses; Land Use Fees; Temporary Land Use Fee Reductions for Recreation Residence Permits</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Forest Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Forest Service (Forest Service or Agency), United States Department of Agriculture, is issuing this final rule to update its special uses regulations, consistent with the requirement in the Cabin Fee Act, to provide for suspension or temporary reduction of the land use fee for a recreation residence permit if access to or occupancy of the recreation residence is significantly restricted. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The final rule is effective October 9, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brandon Smith, Lands, Minerals, and Geology Management Staff, (406) 491-1605 or <E T="03">brandon.c.smith@usda.gov.</E> Individuals who use telecommunications devices for the hearing-impaired may call 711 to reach the Telecommunications Relay Service, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, including holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Forest Service administers the use and occupancy of National Forest System lands through issuance of special use authorizations. The Forest Service administers approximately 74,000 special use authorizations, including nearly 14,000 recreation residence permits for use and occupancy of National Forest System lands across 24 states and 114 national forests. Recreation residences are privately owned cabins that have been authorized on National Forest System lands since 1915. Like other types of special use authorizations, permits for recreation residences are subject to an annual land use fee, payable in advance at the beginning of the calendar year. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Need for the Final Rule</HD> The Cabin Fee Act of 2014 (16 U.S.C. 6214) establishes a tiered fee structure for the use and occupancy of recreation residences on National Forest System lands. Section (f)(3)(A) of the Cabin Fee Act (16 U.S.C. 6214(f)(3)(A)) requires the Forest Service to establish criteria by which the annual land use fee for a recreation residence permit may be suspended or temporarily reduced if access to or occupancy of the recreation residence is significantly restricted. Section (f)(3)(B) of the Cabin Fee Act (16 U.S.C. 6214(f)(3)(B)) requires the determination of whether to suspend or temporarily reduce the annual land use fee for a recreation residence permit to be administratively appealable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Revisions to 36 CFR Part 214</HD> The final rule amends 36 CFR 214.4(c) by adding paragraph (6) to provide for appeal of a decision of whether to temporarily reduce the annual land use fee for a recreation residence permit during significantly restricted access to or occupancy of the recreation residence. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Revisions to 36 CFR Part 251, Subpart B</HD> The final rule adds a definition to 36 CFR 251.51 for the term “significantly restricted access to or occupancy of a recreation residence,” which is defined as when access to or occupancy of a recreation residence is prohibited by law for a period of at least 30 consecutive calendar days (a) by an order issued under 36 CFR part 261, subpart B, closing an area including the National Forest System lands occupied by the recreation residence or closing a National Forest System road providing the sole access to the recreation residence to address public health or safety concerns, such as severe risk of fire or flooding, or (b) by a State or county department of transportation imposing a round-the-clock closure of a State or county road providing the sole access to a recreation residence. The objectivity and simplicity of this definition avoids the need for a detailed factual inquiry or exercise of discretion, thereby facilitating and enhancing consistency in implementation. The definition for “significantly restricted access to or occupancy of a recreation residence” does not include other situations where access to or occupancy of the recreation residence is restricted, such as situations where the recreation residence cannot be accessed or occupied because a private access road or the recreation residence has not been adequately maintained or where a private access road or the recreation residence has been destroyed or substantially damaged. The Department believes these situations should be outside the scope of the temporary land use fee reduction, consistent with the risk of loss clause in the term special use permit for recreation residences, which is a standard clause in special use authorizations. The final rule amends 36 CFR 251.57 by adding paragraph (i) to provide for temporarily reducing the annual land use fee for a recreation residence permit during significantly restricted access to or occupancy of the recreation residence. For consistency and ease of implementation, the final rule provides for temporarily reducing the land use fee proportionate to the number of days of significantly restricted access to or occupancy of the recreation residence, rather than for suspending the land use fee after significantly restricted access to or occupancy of the recreation residence has reached a specified number of days. A temporary land use fee reduction will be calculated by dividing the annual land use fee for the recreation residence by 365 to determine the daily land use fee and then multiplying the daily land use fee by the number of days of significantly restricted access to or occupancy of the recreation residence. For ease of administration, if significantly restricted access to or occupancy of a recreation residence includes part of one day, that day would be counted as a whole day. A temporary land use fee reduction during significantly restricted access to or occupancy of a recreation residence will be applied to the annual land use fee for the recreation residence permit for the following year. The final rule has no effect on the risk of loss clause in term special use permits for recreation residences, other than by temporarily reducing the annual land use fee for a recreation residence permit in accordance with the terms of the final rule, consistent with the Cabin Fee Act. The final rule has no effect on any other type of special use or special use authorization. This final rule is entirely within the scope of section (f)(3)(A) and (B) of the Cabin Fee Act (16 U.S.C. 6214(f)(3)(A) and (B)), which is unambiguous. Section (f)(3)(A) requires the Department to promulgate regulations that “establish criteria pursuant to which the annual fee determined in accordance with this section may be suspended or reduced temporarily if access to, or the occupancy of, the recreational residence is significantly restricted.” Section (f)(3)(A) thus gives the Department discretion to determine the criteria for suspending or temporarily reducing the annual land use fee if access to or occupancy of a recreation residence is significantly restricted. The final rule establishes those criteria as provided by the Cabin Fee Act. Section (f)(3)(B) of the Cabin Fee Act requires the Department to promulgate regulations that “grant the cabin owner the right of an administrative appeal of the determination made in accordance with subparagraph (A) whether to suspend or reduce temporarily the annual fee.” The final rule provides for such an administrative appeal right as required by the Cabin Fee Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Comments and Responses</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> The proposed rule was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on October 2, 2023 (88 FR 67694). The <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice provided for a 60-day comment period that closed December 1, 2023. The Forest Service received 29 comments during the comment period. One comment was from an organization, and the other comments, which were from individuals, referenced the comment from the organization or incorporated text from that comment with slight modifications. Most of the comments addressed the scope of the criteria for determining when a recreation residence would qualify for a suspension or temporary reduction of the annual land use fee for a recreation residence and the calculation for determining a temporary reduction in the annual land use fee. The comments on the proposed rule and the Department's responses follow. <HD SOURCE="HD2">General Comments</HD> <E T="03">Comment:</E> Several commenters believed that the requirement in the Cabin Fee Act to provide for suspension or temporary reduction of the annual land use fee for a recreation residence permit if access to or occupancy of the recreation residence is significantly restricted should be interpreted broadly to encompass a wide range of scenarios. These commenters believed that additional scenarios, such as when a recreation residence is destroyed or partially damaged, should trigger a suspension or temporary reduction of the annual land use fee for a recreation residence because of significantly restricted access to or occupancy of the recreation residence. <E T="03">Response:</E> As required by the Cabin Fee Act, the proposed and final rules specify the criteria for when the annual land use fee for a recreation residence permit will be temporarily reduced if access to or occupancy of the recreation residence is significantly restricted. Recreation residence permits contain standard terms to provide for legal and programmatic sufficiency and that are included in special use authorizations for a wide range of uses and activities on National Forest System lands. Comments regarding standard te ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━