Procedural Summary:
Issuance of the Board’s Initial Notice of Proposed Rulemaking:
On February 28, 2000, and March 9, 2000, the Office of Compliance published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“ANPR”) in the Congressional Record (144 Cong. Rec. S862 (daily ed., Feb. 28, 2000), H916 (daily ed., March 9, 2000)). On December 6, 2001, upon consideration of the comments to the ANPR, the Office published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPR”) in the Congressional Record (147 Cong. Rec. S12539 (daily ed. Dec. 6, 2001), H9065 (daily ed. Dec. 6, 2001)). The Board took no action on those earlier Notices and instead, after extensive consultation with stakeholders, issued a subsequent Notice on December 1, 2001.
Why did the Board propose these new Regulations? Section 4(c) of the CAA, 2 U.S.C. 1316a (4), requires that the Board of Directors propose substantive regulations implementing the rights and protections relating to veterans’ employment which are “the same as the most relevant substantive regulations (applicable with respect to the executive branch) promulgated to implement the statutory provisions . . . except insofar as the Board may determine, for good cause shown and stated together with the regulation, that a modification of such regulations would be more effective for the implementation of the rights and protections under this section.”
What procedure followed the Board’s December 1, 2001 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking?
The December 1, 2001 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking included a thirty day comment period, which began on December 2, 2001. A number of comments to the proposed substantive regulations were received by the Office of Compliance from interested parties. The Board of Directors has reviewed the comments from interested parties, engaged in extensive discussions with stakeholders to obtain input and suggestions into the drafting of the regulations, made a number of changes to the proposed substantive regulations in response to comments, and has adopted the amended regulations.
