Sweet Onions Grown in the Walla Walla Valley of Southeast Washington and Northeast Oregon; Decreased Assessment Rate

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 956</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-SC-24-0080]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Sweet Onions Grown in the Walla Walla Valley of Southeast Washington and Northeast Oregon; Decreased Assessment Rate</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule would implement a recommendation from the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Marketing Committee (Committee) to decrease the assessment rate established for the 2025 and subsequent fiscal periods from $0.20 to $0.17 per 50-pound bag or equivalent for sweet onions grown in the Walla Walla Valley of Southeast Washington and Northeast Oregon. The proposed assessment rate would remain in effect indefinitely unless modified, suspended, or terminated. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by October 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested persons are invited to submit written comments concerning this proposed rule. Comments can be sent to the Docket Clerk, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237. Comments can also be sent to the Docket Clerk electronically by email: <E T="03">MarketingOrderComment@usda.gov</E> or via the 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> . Comments submitted in response to this proposed rule will be included in the record and will be made available to the public and can be viewed at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Please be advised that the identity of the individuals or entities submitting the comments will be made public on the internet at the address provided above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Virginia Tjemsland, Marketing Specialist, or Barry Broadbent, Chief, Northwest Region Branch, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA; telephone: (503) 326-2724; or email: <E T="03">Virginia.L.Tjemsland@usda.gov</E> or <E T="03">Barry.Broadbent@usda.gov.</E> Small businesses may request information on complying with this regulation by contacting Antoinette Carter, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237; telephone: (202) 720-8085; or email: <E T="03">Antoinette.Carter@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This action, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553, proposes to amend regulations issued to carry out a marketing order as defined in 7 CFR 900.2(j). This proposed rule is issued under Marketing Agreement and Order No. 956, both as amended (7 CFR part 956), regulating the handling of sweet onions grown in the Walla Walla Valley of Southeast Washington and Northeast Oregon. Part 956 (referred to as the “Order”) is effective under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, as amended (7 U.S.C. 601-674), hereinafter referred to as the “Act.” The Committee locally administers the Order and is comprised of producers and handlers of Walla Walla sweet onions operating within the area of production, as well as a public member. The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is issuing this proposed rule in conformance with Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 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 action falls within a category of regulatory actions that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) exempted from Executive Order 12866 review. This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 13175, “Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments,” which requires Federal agencies to consider whether their rulemaking actions would have Tribal implications. AMS has determined that this rulemaking is unlikely to have substantial direct effects on one or more Indian Tribes, on the relationship between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes. This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 12988, “Civil Justice Reform.” Under the Order now in effect, Walla Walla sweet onion handlers are subject to assessments. Funds to administer the Order are derived from such assessments. It is intended that the assessment rate would be applicable to all assessable Walla Walla sweet onions for the 2025 fiscal period, and continue until amended, suspended, or terminated. The Act provides that administrative proceedings must be exhausted before parties may file suit in court. Under section 608(c)(15)(A) of the Act, any handler subject to an order may file with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) a petition stating that the order, any provision of the order, or any obligation imposed in connection with the order is not in accordance with law and request a modification of the order or to be exempted therefrom. Such handler is afforded the opportunity for a hearing on the petition. After the hearing, USDA would rule on the petition. The Act provides that the district court of the United States in any district in which the handler is an inhabitant, or has his or her principal place of business, has jurisdiction to review USDA's ruling on the petition, provided an action is filed not later than 20 days after the date of the entry of the ruling. This proposed rule would decrease the assessment rate for Walla Walla sweet onions handled under the Order from $0.20 per 50-pound bag or equivalent, the rate that was established for the 2023 and subsequent fiscal periods, to $0.17 per 50-pound bag or equivalent for the 2025 and subsequent fiscal periods. Sections 956.41 and 956.42 of the Order authorize the Committee, with the approval of AMS, to formulate an annual budget of expenses and collect assessments from handlers to administer the program. The members of the Committee are familiar with the Committee's needs and with the costs of goods and services in their local area and are able to formulate an appropriate budget and assessment rate. The assessment rate is formulated and discussed in a public meeting, and all directly affected persons have an opportunity to participate and provide input. For the 2023 and subsequent fiscal periods, the Committee recommended, and AMS approved, an assessment rate of $0.20 per 50-pound bag or equivalent of Walla Walla sweet onions. That rate continues in effect from fiscal period to fiscal period until modified, suspended, or terminated by AMS upon recommendation and information submitted by the Committee or other information available to AMS. The Committee met on December 4, 2024, and unanimously recommended with a vote of six in favor and none opposed, 2025 fiscal period expenditures of $58,374 and an assessment rate of $0.17 per 50-pound bag or equivalent of Walla Walla sweet onions handled for the 2025 and subsequent fiscal periods. In comparison, last year's budgeted expenditures were $56,330. The proposed assessment rate of $0.17 per 50-pound bag or equivalent is $0.03 lower than the rate currently in effect. The Committee recommended decreasing the assessment rate to reduce its reserve funds to within a level authorized under the Order. The Committee projects 222,950 50-pound bags or equivalent of assessable Walla Walla sweet onions for the 2025 fiscal period, which is 20,800 50-pound bags or equivalent less than was projected for the 2024 fiscal period. The major expenditures recommended by the Committee for the 2025 fiscal period include administrative, promotion, research, and travel expenses as well as a contingency emergency fund. This is consistent with budgeted expenditures for the 2024 fiscal period except there was no budgeted contingency fund. The Committee derived the recommended assessment rate by considering anticipated crop year expenses, expected volume of assessable Walla Walla sweet onions, and the amount of funds available in the authorized reserve. The expected 222,950 50-pound bags or equivalent of Walla Walla sweet onions from the 2025 crop is expected to generate $37,902 in assessment revenue at the proposed assessment rate (222,950 50-pound bags or equivalent multiplied by the $0.17 assessment rate). The income generated from handler assessments, along with $20,472 in reserve funds, would be sufficient to meet the Committee's estimated program expenditures of $58,374 for the 2025 fiscal period. Funds available in the financial reserve (projected to be about $91,694 at the start of the 2025 fiscal period) would be kept within the maximum permitted by the Order (not to exceed two fiscal period's budgeted expenses, as authorized in § 956.44). The proposed assessment rate would continue in effect indefinitely unless modified, suspended, or terminated by AMS upon recommendation and information submitted by the Committee or other available information. Although this assessment rate would be in effect for an indefinite period, the Committee would continue to meet prior to or during each fiscal period to recommend a budget of expenses and consider recommendations for modification of the assessment rate. The dates and times of Committee meetings are available from the Committee or AM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━