Department of Agriculture May 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Rural Housing Service is amending its regulations to change the threshold for surety requirements guaranteeing payment and performance from a $100,000 contract amount to the maximum Rural Development Single Family Housing area lending limit. This limit will vary by locality. This will liberalize the requirement for surety and take into account the increased construction cost of single family homes in Rural Development's Single Family Housing Program. This will ease the burden on small contractors for whom obtaining surety is difficult and expensive, thereby reducing costs to our single family housing borrowers. On August 26, 2005 (70 FR 50222), the Rural Housing Service proposed to change the surety requirements for Single Family Housing loans under Section 502 of the Housing Act of 1949 (42 U.S.C. 1472). The rule, open for comment for a period of 60 days, received two comments regarding its implementation in Rural Housing procedure. The first comment is in favor of this final rule, thus reinforcing the idea that reducing costs for the contractor by raising the threshold at which surety is required, ultimately benefits the borrower through greater cost savings. The second comment does not favor the proposed rule. The essence of this argument is based upon protecting federal funds, by providing surety (performance and payment bonds). The cost of surety places a greater financial burden on the borrower, as well as making it more difficult for small contractors in rural areas to service RHS borrowers. RHS oversees the construction process until the project is complete, insuring that Federal funds are properly disbursed for the adequate amount of completed construction demonstrated by the contractor. In addition, surety requirements are not entirely eliminated in Single Family Housing. If the borrower requests surety or the loan official feels that additional security is needed for a specific project, then surety will be provided.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35, as amended), the Rural Utilities Service an agency delivering the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development Utilities Programs, invites comments on this information collection for which approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be requested.

Pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, this constitutes notice of the upcoming meeting of the Grain Inspection Advisory Committee (``the Committee'').

We are amending the fruits and vegetables regulations to allow the importation, under certain conditions, of fresh commercial citrus fruit (grapefruit, limes, mandarin oranges or tangerines, sweet oranges, and tangelos) from approved areas of Peru into the United States. Based on the evidence in a recent pest risk analysis, we believe these articles can be safely imported from Peru, provided certain conditions are met. This action will provide for the importation of citrus from Peru into the United States while continuing to protect the United States against the introduction of plant pests.

This final rule amends the current ten Federal milk marketing orders issued under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 (AMAA) to reflect recent amendments to the AMAA. The Milk Regulatory Equity Act of 2005, which was signed into law on April 11, 2006, amended the AMAA to ensure regulatory equity between and among dairy farmers and handlers for sales of packaged fluid milk in Federal milk marketing order areas and into certain non-Federally regulated milk marketing areas from Federal milk marketing areas.