Christmas Tree Promotion, Research, and Information Order

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 1214</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-SC-24-0004]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Christmas Tree Promotion, Research, and Information Order</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposal invites comments on changes to the Christmas Tree Promotion, Research, and Information Order (Order). These changes include amending the Board's name from “Christmas Tree Promotion Board” to “Real Christmas Tree Board”, increasing the administrative expenses cap from 10 to 15 percent, allowing importers to request refunds of assessments paid on trees that were shipped to the United States but were not sold, and increasing the mandatory period to maintain books and records relating to the Order. Many of these changes are administrative in nature. This action would also make several non-substantive clarifications and changes to modernize the Board's procedures. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by July 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested persons are invited to submit written comments concerning this proposed rule. Comments may be mailed to the Docket Clerk, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237; Fax: (202) 720-8938; or submitted electronically by Email: <E T="03">SM.USDA.MRP.AMS.MDDComment@usda.gov;</E> or via internet at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Comments should reference the document number and the date and page number of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . All comments will be made available for public inspection in the Office of the Docket Clerk during regular business hours or can be viewed at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Comments submitted in response to this proposed rule will be included in the rulemaking record and will be made available to the public. Please be advised that the identity of the individuals or entities submitting the comments will be made public. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> George Webster, Marketing Specialist, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 1400 Independence Avenue SW, Room 1406-S, Stop 0244, Washington, DC 20250-0244; Telephone: (202) 720-8085; or Email: <E T="03">George.Webster@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This proposed rule affecting the Order (7 CFR part 1214) is authorized by the Commodity Promotion, Research, and Information Act of 1996 (the Act) (7 U.S.C. 7411-7425). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Orders 12866 and 13563</HD> USDA is issuing this proposed rule in conformance with Executive Orders 12866 and 13563. Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 direct agencies to assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives and, if regulation is necessary, to select regulatory approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety effects, distributive impacts, and equity). Executive Order 13563 emphasizes the importance of quantifying both costs and benefits, reducing costs, harmonizing rules, and promoting flexibility. This proposed action falls within a category of regulatory actions that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) exempted from Executive Order 12866, and therefore, has not been reviewed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Order 13175</HD> This action has been reviewed in accordance with the requirements of Executive Order 13175, Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments. AMS has assessed the impact of this proposed rule on Indian Tribes and determined that this rule would not have Tribal implications that require consultation under Executive Order 13175. AMS hosts a quarterly teleconference with Tribal leaders where matters of mutual interest regarding the marketing of agricultural products are discussed. Information about the proposed changes to the regulations will be shared during an upcoming quarterly call, and Tribal leaders will be informed about the proposed revisions to the regulation and the opportunity to submit comments. AMS will work with the USDA Office of Tribal Relations to ensure meaningful consultation is provided as needed with regard to these proposed changes to the Order. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Order 12988</HD> This proposal has been reviewed under Executive Order 12988, Civil Justice Reform. It is not intended to have retroactive effect. Section 524 of the Commodity Promotion, Research, and Information Act of 1996 (the Act) (7 U.S.C. 7423) provides that it shall not affect or preempt any other Federal or State law authorizing promotion or research relating to an agricultural commodity. Under sec. 519 of the Act (7 U.S.C. 7418), a person subject to an order may file a written petition with USDA stating that an order, any provision of an order, or any obligation imposed in connection with an order, is not established in accordance with the law, and request a modification of an order or an exemption from an order. Any petition filed challenging an order, any provision of an order, or any obligation imposed in connection with an order, shall be filed within two years after the effective date of an order, provision, or obligation subject to challenge in the petition. The petitioner will have the opportunity for a hearing on the petition. Thereafter, USDA will issue a ruling on the petition. The Act provides that the district court of the United States for any district in which the petitioner resides or conducts business shall have the jurisdiction to review a final ruling on the petition if the petitioner files a complaint for that purpose not later than 20 days after the date of the entry of USDA's final ruling. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Under the Christmas Tree Promotion, Research, and Information Order (7 CFR part 1214) (Order), the Christmas Tree Promotion Board (Board), with USDA oversight, administers a nationally coordinated program of research, promotion and information designed to maintain and expand markets for fresh cut Christmas trees. The program is financed by assessments on domestic producers and importers of 500 or more Christmas trees annually. The Board, which is composed of one importer and eleven domestic producers from three regions across the United States, unanimously recommended these proposed changes during a meeting on September 21, 2023. These proposed changes include: changing the Board name; revising timelines associated with budget and financial requirements; clarifying assessment and exemption requirements; and modernizing language in the Order. The proposal would also make clarifying changes and changes to administrative requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Board Recommendation To Change Board Name</HD> Currently the Order refers to the Board as the “Christmas Tree Promotion Board”. In 2022, the Board rebranded their name on their website and marketing materials to “Real Christmas Tree Board” to alleviate confusion amongst industry members and distinguish the program from other national organizations who represent both real and artificial Christmas trees. This proposed change would align the language of the Order with the Board's name, as it has been used on their website and marketing materials since 2022, and would permit the Board to use the new name for all business purposes. The proposal would make these changes in sections 1214.2 and 1214.40 of the Order. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes to Budget and Financial Requirements</HD> Section 1214.46(p) currently states that the Board must submit a budget for approval within 60 days after assessments are due to the Board, which falls on April 15th. This requirement would be removed so Board staff could provide a more accurate budget when final revenue and expenses of the current fiscal period are known. To accommodate this change, a budget submission deadline would be added in section 1214.50(a) which would require the Board to submit a budget for review no more than 90 days or less than 60 days prior to the fiscal period. This change would require the budget to be submitted between May 1st and June 1st, giving the Board additional time to calculate accurate budget numbers. Section 1214.50(j) would be revised to increase the maximum allowable administrative expenses of the Board from 10 percent of annual revenue to 15 percent. Section 515(e)(5) of the Act (7 U.S.C. 7414(e)(5)) allows a spending limit of up to 15 percent of income for the fiscal period for administrative costs. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, the Board's administrative costs were 7.2 percent, 7.3 percent, and 9.3 percent of revenues, respectively. The Board's administrative costs have increased, largely due to inflation, while revenues have decreased because of weather events. The Board expects this trend to persist and therefore seeks to have greater budgetary flexibility that would allow them to continue paying for administrative costs with decreases in revenues. Notably, most of the other Orders established pursuant to the Act have a 15 percent administrative cost cap. Section 1214.51 outlines the Board's financial statement requirements. This proposed rule would revise the financial statement requirement in section 1214.51(a) by requiring financial reporting on a periodic basis as opposed to quarterly. This proposed change would align the Order to the Board's current procedure of producing financial statements monthly. Section 1214.51(c) states the Board must submit an annual financial statement within 90 days after the fiscal period. This deadline has proven to be difficult to ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━