Office of Environmental Quality Management Fund

<RULE> COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY <CFR>40 CFR Part 1518</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0331-AA09</RIN> <SUBJECT>Office of Environmental Quality Management Fund</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Council on Environmental Quality. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is amending its Office of Environmental Quality Management Fund regulations to clarify their meaning, modernize them to reflect developments in CEQ's practices in administering the Office of Environmental Quality Management Fund (the Management Fund) since CEQ first adopted its regulations, and make administrative changes. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective January 15, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Samuel Roth, Associate General Counsel, 202-395-5750, <E T="03">Samuel.E.Roth@ceq.eop.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Environmental Quality Improvement Act, as amended (Pub. L. 91-224, Title II, April 3, 1970; Pub. L. 97-258, September 13, 1982; and Pub. L. 98-581, October 30, 1984) established the Management Fund to receive advance payments from other agencies or accounts that may be used solely to finance (1) study contracts that are jointly sponsored by the Office of Environmental Quality (OEQ) and one or more other Federal agencies; and (2) Federal interagency environmental projects (including task forces) in which OEQ participates. 42 U.S.C. 4375(a). The statute requires the Director of the Office of Environmental Quality (OEQ) to promulgate regulations setting forth policies and procedures for operation of the OEQ Management Fund. 42 U.S.C. 4375(c). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  OEQ houses the professional and administrative staff of CEQ, and the Chair of CEQ is the Director of OEQ <E T="03">ex officio.</E> 42 U.S.C. 4372(a), (d)(1). This preamble refers to the Chair of CEQ and the Director of OEQ, and to CEQ and OEQ, interchangeably. </FTNT> The CEQ Chair approved internal policies and procedures for operation of the Management Fund in January 1985. On October 4, 2002, the CEQ Chair promulgated regulations governing the operation of the Management Fund. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  CEQ, Office of Environmental Quality Management Fund, 67 FR 62189 (Oct. 4, 2002). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of the Final Rule</HD> CEQ is amending its Management Fund regulations to clarify their meaning, including for consistency with the Plain Writing Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111-274) and the Federal Plain Language Guidelines, <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> modernize them to reflect developments in CEQ's practices in administering the Management Fund since CEQ first adopted its regulations, and make administrative changes. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Federal Plain Language Guidelines (1st rev. May 2011), <E T="03">https://www.plainlanguage.gov/media/FederalPLGuidelines.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <E T="03">Section 1518.1</E> — <E T="03">Purpose.</E> CEQ revises this section to describe the purpose of the Office of Environmental Quality Management Fund as well as the purpose of part 1518, which is to set forth CEQ's procedures for administering the Management Fund. <E T="03">Section 1518.2</E> — <E T="03">Definitions.</E> CEQ revises this section to define key terms that appear throughout part 1518. In particular, CEQ removes the definitions of the terms “advance payment,” which the prior regulations defined but did not use elsewhere in part 1518, and “source,” which no longer appears in the regulations as revised. CEQ adds definitions for “environmental project” and “study contract” to clarify the meaning of those terms. These definitions are consistent with CEQ's authorities under National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and the Environmental Quality Improvement Act of 1970. CEQ also adds a definition of “personnel costs” to clarify the types of expenditures that CEQ may make from the Management Fund. Finally, CEQ adds definitions for “payment” and “reallocation” to clarify how the regulations use those terms to describe the movement of funds to and from the Management Fund. <E T="03">Section 1518.3</E> — <E T="03">Policy and general requirements.</E> CEQ revises this section to more clearly explain the internal policies and procedures by which CEQ administers the Management Fund, including the types of expenditures that CEQ may make from the Management Fund, and to eliminate outdated provisions that no longer reflect CEQ's business processes. <E T="03">Section 1518.4</E> — <E T="03">Charters.</E> CEQ revises this section, which describes the purpose of charters for environmental projects and study contracts that receive support from the Management Fund, to more clearly set forth what a charter must contain and to better explain the roles of the Director and the Project Officer in approving and amending a charter. <E T="03">Section 1518.5</E> — <E T="03">Finances and accounting.</E> CEQ moves the provisions on Management Fund finances and accounting from the previous 40 CFR 1518.4(b) to § 1518.5. This section explains how agencies make payments into the Management Fund and specifies procedures for making expenditures from the Management Fund. CEQ makes clarifying changes to this section to improve its readability and better reflect current practices. Paragraph (a) requires the Project Officer for each environmental project or study contract receiving support from the Management Fund to prepare a budget estimate and update it annually. CEQ adds a new provision in paragraph (c)(1) that, consistent with longstanding practice, requires the Director to transmit a letter to an agency when requesting a payment into the Management Fund. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Regulatory Analysis and Notices</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Administrative Procedure Act</HD> This rule relates to a matter of agency management or personnel and is a rule of agency organization, procedure, or practice. As such, this rule is exempt from the usual requirements of prior notice and comment and a 30-day delay in effective date. See 5 U.S.C. 553(a)(2), (b), and (d). The rule is effective upon signature. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 13272, Proper Consideration of Small Entities in Agency Rulemaking</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), as amended, 5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> and E.O. 13272, <E T="03">Proper Consideration of Small Entities in Agency Rulemaking,</E> <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> require agencies to assess the impacts of rules on small entities. Under the RFA, small entities include small businesses, small organizations, and small governmental jurisdictions. An agency must prepare a final regulatory flexibility analysis unless it determines and certifies that a final rule, if promulgated, would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. 5 U.S.C. 605(b). <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  67 FR 53461 (Aug. 16, 2002). </FTNT> This rule relates to a matter of agency management or personnel and is a rule of agency organization, procedure, or practice. Accordingly, CEQ hereby certifies that the rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act</HD> Section 201 of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-4, 2 U.S.C. 1531), requires Federal agencies to assess the effects of their regulatory actions on state, local, and Tribal governments, and the private sector to the extent that such regulations incorporate requirements specifically set forth in law. Before promulgating a rule that may result in the expenditure by a state, Tribal, or local government, in the aggregate, or by the private sector of $100 million, adjusted annually for inflation, in any 1 year, an agency must prepare a written statement that assesses the effects on state, Tribal, and local governments and the private sector. 2 U.S.C. 1532. This rule relates to a matter of agency management or personnel and is a rule of agency organization, procedure, or practice, and accordingly will not result in expenditures of $100 million or more for state, local, and Tribal governments, in the aggregate, or the private sector in any 1 year. This rule also does not impose any enforceable duty, contain any unfunded mandate, or otherwise have any effect on small governments subject to the requirements of 2 U.S.C. 1531 through 1538. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review</HD> E.O. 12866, as supplemented and affirmed by E.O. 13563 and amended by E.O. 14094, provides that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs will review any regulatory action that qualifies as a “significant regulatory action” within the meaning of the E.O. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The rule does not qualify as a significant regulatory action. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> E.O. 12866, <E T="03">Regulatory Planning and Review,</E> 58 FR 51735, 51737 (Oct. 4, 1993); E.O. 14094, <E T="03">Modernizing Regulatory Review,</E> 88 FR 21879, 21879-80 (Apr. 11, 2023); E.O. 13563, <E T="03">Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review,</E> 76 FR 3821, 3822 (Jan. 21, 2011). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. Executive Order 12988, Civil Justice Reform</HD> Under section 3(a) of E.O. 12988, <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> agencies must review their regulations to eliminate drafting errors and ambiguities, draft them to minimize litigation, and provide a clear legal standard for affected conduct. Section 3(b) provides a list of specific matters that agencies must consider when conducting the review required by section 3(a). CEQ has conducted this review and deter ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━