Federal Register Clarifies When Rules Get Published
Because agencies set the schedule, publisher won’t discuss timing.
With the government officially shut down by the snow on Tuesday, managers at the Federal Register took the time to post a clarification aimed at eager lobbyists and interest groups seeking inside dope on the timing of coming rules and notices.
“A question we get asked pretty often is ‘When is this document I read/heard about going to publish?’ ” Ben Jordi wrote. “And the answer seems a bit secretive.”
He then cited the Code of Federal Regulations’ restrictions on Federal Register employees discussing a document with members of the public during the “confidential processing” period that occurs before the documents are “filed for public inspection.”
Agencies issuing the rules have their “own communications timeline,” Jordi noted. "With a typical publication timeline of three business days, usually we know about a document publishing about two days before the public does, but it’s not our document, so we can’t discuss it.”
Some reasons for agency delays include a need for last-minute revisions, a sudden end to a need for the document and a desire by the agency for more time to consider public comments.
The most up-date-date information on what is available to the public, the blogpost notes, is on the Federal Register’s Public Inspection Desk, for which email alert subscriptions are available.