Ohio Regulatory Program

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement</SUBAGY> <CFR>30 CFR Part 935</CFR> <DEPDOC>[SATS No. OH-263-FOR; Docket ID: OSM-2021-0002; S1D1S SS08011000 SX064A000 252S180110; S2D2S SS08011000 SX064A000 25XS501520]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ohio Regulatory Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; approval of amendment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), are approving an amendment to the Ohio regulatory program (Ohio program) under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA or the Act). The amendment revises Ohio's regulations to remove the requirement that a coal mining permit application include either the employment identification number or the last four digits of the Social Security number of a resident agent. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The effective date is December 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Thomas J. Koptchak, Field Office Director, Pittsburgh Field Office, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 3 Parkway Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15220; Telephone: (202) 513-7685; Email: <E T="03">tkoptchak@osmre.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background on the Ohio Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Submission of the Amendment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. OSMRE's Findings</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Summary and Disposition of Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. OSMRE's Decision</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background on the Ohio Program</HD> Section 503(a) of the Act permits a State to assume primacy for the regulation of surface coal mining and reclamation operations on non-Federal and non-Indian lands within its borders by demonstrating that its approved State program includes, among other things, State laws and regulations that govern surface coal mining and reclamation operations in accordance with the Act and consistent with the Federal regulations. <E T="03">See</E> 30 U.S.C. 1253(a)(1) and (7). On the basis of these criteria, the Secretary of the Interior conditionally approved the Ohio program on August 10, 1982 (effective August 16, 1982). You can find background information on the Ohio program, including the Secretary's findings, the disposition of comments, and conditions of approval of the Ohio program in the August 10, 1982, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (47 FR 34717). You can also find later actions concerning the Ohio program and program amendments at 30 CFR 935.10, “State regulatory program approval;” 935.11, “Conditions of State regulatory program approval;” and 935.15, “Approval of Ohio regulatory program amendments.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Submission of the Amendment</HD> By letter dated January 8, 2021 (Administrative Record No. OH 2199.01), Ohio sent us a proposed amendment to the Ohio program. The proposed amendment would revise the Ohio program regulations at Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) sections 1501:13-4-03 and 1501:13-5-01. The proposed amendment seeks to: (1) remove the requirement that a coal mining permit application include the employer identification number or the last four digits of the Social Security number (SSN) of a resident agent listed in the application; and (2) make one unrelated editorial correction. We announced receipt of the proposed amendment in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on April 28, 2021 (86 FR 22370). In the same document, we opened the public comment period and provided an opportunity for a public hearing or meeting on the adequacy of the amendment. No hearing or meeting was requested, and, therefore, neither was held. The public comment period ended on May 28, 2021. We received no comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. OSMRE's Findings</HD> The following are the findings we made concerning the amendment under SMCRA and the Federal regulations at 30 CFR 732.15 and 732.17. As described below, we are approving the amendment. <HD SOURCE="HD2">OAC 1501:13-4-03 Permit Applications; Requirements for Legal, Financial, Compliance and Related Information</HD> Ohio has proposed revising the regulations at OAC 1501:13-4-03(B)(1) by removing resident agent from the list of persons for whom a coal mining permit application must provide either an employer identification number or the last four digits of an SSN. Additionally, Ohio has proposed amending OAC 1501:13-4-03(B)(4) to require that each application other than a single proprietorship contain the name, address, and telephone numbers of the resident agent of the applicant who will accept service of process. The requirement that an application provide an employer identification number or SSN for a listed resident agent was first proposed in the Federal regulations on May 28, 1987 (52 FR 20032) and finalized in our rulemaking on March 2, 1989 (54 FR 8982), which was commonly referred to as the “permit information rule.” That rulemaking revised section 30 CFR 778.13, “Identification of interests,” to add the SSN or employer identification number requirement along with a list of other persons or entities other than the applicant that would be required to provide this additional information. In that rule, we also explained that, because a taxpayer identification number (TIN) can either be a SSN or an employer identification number, we replaced “taxpayer identification number” from the proposed rule with the term “employer identification number” to avoid confusion. <E T="03">See id.</E> at 8983. After the new rules were published, the rulemaking became the subject of litigation, which resulted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit invalidating our 1989 permit information rule in its entirety on grounds unrelated to the provision at issue here. <E T="03">See National Mining Ass'n</E> v. <E T="03">Interior,</E> 105 F.3d 691 (D.C. Cir. 1997). We subsequently announced a new proposed rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on December 21, 1998 (63 FR 70580). During the public comment period, we received comments stating that collection of this information would be burdensome for many of the listed parties, and commenters also challenged the legality of the provisions. In response, we removed in the final rule the resident agent from the list of those entities for which an application was required to provide an employer identification number or SSN. The final rule published on December 19, 2000 (65 FR 79582). As part of the revision, this section was renumbered from section 778.13 to section 778.11 and renamed “Providing applicant and operator information.” In 30 CFR 778.11, we required simply the taxpayer identification number, explaining that this term means the SSN, for individuals and the employer identification number for businesses. Ohio is making these changes to the OAC to mirror the revised Federal regulations at 30 CFR 778.11. After the proposed provisions are revised, a resident agent will remain on the list of entities that need to provide contact information for permitting purposes under the addition to subsection (B)(4). The permit application will no longer be required to include the registered agent's employer identification number or the last four digits of their SSN. Ohio also asserts that this information is not necessary for its own purposes, and, therefore, the proposed revisions would make no changes that affect its approved program. <E T="03">OSMRE Finding:</E> We have determined that the revised provisions OAC 1501:13-4-03(B)(1) and (B)(4) are substantively identical to, and, therefore, no less effective than, the Federal regulations at 30 CFR 778.11. With these changes Ohio seeks consistency with the Federal regulations and is simplifying the permitting process by removing unnecessary information from the application. Therefore, we are approving the revisions to OAC 1501:13-3-03. Additionally, while reviewing this amendment we noticed that we have not before specifically addressed several minor revisions to subsection (B) that Ohio made in 2009. Those revisions clarified that an application need only include the employer identification number <E T="03">or</E> the last four digits of the SSN for those relevant persons, rather than requiring the employer identification number for those relevant persons <E T="03">and</E> allowing the application to include the SSN only for those who choose to provide them. In our last two approvals of revisions to OAC 1501:13-4-03, which both pre-date and post-date Ohio's 2009 revisions and our 2000 rulemaking, we found those provisions to be consistent with the Federal regulations. On April 19, 1991, we found that OAC 1501:13-4-03(B)(1) through (11) were “identical in meaning” to the corresponding Federal regulations. <E T="03">See</E> 56 FR 16004 (Apr. 19, 1991). In 2015, following a complete side-by-side review of Ohio's regulations (that included Ohio's 2009 revisions) compared with the Federal counterpart provisions, we elaborated in our findings that “[t]here are a few changes not addressed in the Findings because they involve minor clarifications or non-substantive corrections.” 80 FR 63120 (Oct. 19, 2015). To remove any doubt as to the effectiveness of OAC 1501:13-4-03 as currently phrased, and to reiterate that providing full or partial SSNs is not necessary in all cases, we clarify now that Ohio's 2009 revisions were “minor clarifications or non-substantive corrections” referenced in our 2015 approval. <HD SOURCE="HD2">OAC 1501:13-5-01 Review, Public Participation, and Approval or Disapproval of Permit Applications and Permit Terms and Condit ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. 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