[Federal Register: March 18, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 52)]
[Notices]
[Page 12017-12018]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr18mr02-75]
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OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT ETHICS
Proposed Collection; Comment Request: Proposed Slightly Revised
OGE Form 450 Executive Branch Confidential Financial Disclosure Report
AGENCY: Office of Government Ethics (OGE).
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: After this first round notice and public comment period,OGE
plans to submit a slightly revised version of its OGE Form 450 for
confidential financial disclosure reporting under its existing
executive branch regulations for review and three-year extension of
approval by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the
Paperwork Reduction Act.
DATES: Comments by the agencies and the public on this proposal are
invited and should be received by June 3, 2002.
ADDRESSES: Comments should be sent to: Mary T. Donovan, Office of
Administration and Information Management, Office of GovernmentEthics,
Suite 500, 1201 New York Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20005-3917.
Comments may also be sent electronically to OGE's InternetE-mail
address atusoge@oge.gov(for E-mail messages, the subject line should
include the following reference--``OGE Form 450 Executive Branch
Confidential Financial Disclosure Report Paperwork Comment'').
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ms. Donovan at the Office of
Government Ethics; telephone: 202-208-8000, ext. 1185; TDD: 202-208-
8025; FAX: 202-208-8038. A copy of the proposed slightly revised
Confidential Financial Disclosure Report form may be obtained, without
charge, by contacting Ms. Donovan.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Office of Government Ethics is planning
to submit, after this notice and comment period a slightly revised
(pending the minor change noted below) version of the OGE Form 450
Executive Branch Confidential Financial Disclosure Report for three-
year extension of approval by OMB under the Paperwork Reduction Act of
1995, 44 U.S.C. chapter 35. The OGE Form 450 (OMB control # 3209-0006)
collects information from covered department and agency officials as
required under OGE's executive branchwide regulatory provisions in
subpart I of 5 CFR part 2634. The OGE Form 450 serves as the uniform
report form for collection, on a confidential basis, of financial
information required by the OGE regulation from certain new entrant and
incumbent employees of the Federal Government executive branch
departments and agencies in order to allow ethics officials to conduct
conflict of interest reviews and to resolve any actual or potential
conflicts found.
The basis for the OGE regulation and the report form is two-fold.
First, section 201(d) of Executive Order 12674 of April 12, 1989 (as
modified by Executive Order 12731 of October 17, 1990) makes OGE
responsible for the establishment of a system of nonpublic
(confidential) financial disclosure by executive branch employees to
complement the system of public financial disclosure under the Ethics
in Government Act of 1978 (the ``Ethics Act''), as amended, 5 U.S.C.
appendix. Second, section 107(a) of the Ethics Act, 5 U.S.C. app. sec.
107(a), further provides authority for OGE as the supervising ethics
office for the executive branch of the Federal Government to require
that appropriate executive agency employees file confidential financial
disclosure reports, ``in such form as the supervising ethics office may
prescribe.'' The current OGE Form 450, adopted in 1999, together with
the underlying OGE 5 CFR part 2634 executive branchwide financial
disclosure regulation, issued in 1992 and modified at various times
since, constitute the basic form OGE has prescribed for such
confidential financial disclosure in the executive branch.
The only changes to the OGE Form 450 that OGE is proposing at this
time (as also referenced on the mark-up copy of the form) are updating
the contact information to reflect recent OGE organizational changes,
adding a continuation page to Part I, and the forthcoming adjustment to
the thresholds for reporting of gifts and travel reimbursements for
regular employee annual filers in Part V of the OGE Form 450. Currently
these thresholds require the reporting of gifts and reimbursements
totaling more than $260 from any one source during the annual reporting
period, subject to a de minimis exclusion for any item valued at $104
or less (which is not counted toward the overall threshold). The
thresholds will have to be adjusted sometime this year when the General
Services Administration redefines ``minimal value'' under the Foreign
Gifts and Decorations Act, 5 U.S.C. 7342(a)(5), for the three-year
period 2002-2004. Currently, foreign gifts minimal value is set at $260
or less pursuant to 41 CFR 102-42.10 of GSA's regulations. Under
section 102(a)(2)(A) and (B) of the Ethics Act, 5 U.S.C. app. section
102(a)(2)(A) and (B), the public financial disclosure reporting
thresholds are pegged to any adjustment of minimal value over $250 (at
the same time and by the same amount percentage). The Office of
Government Ethics has extended the statutory thresholds to confidential
financial disclosure reporting for the executive branch. See 5 CFR
2634.907(a)(3), so incorporating the reporting of gifts and
reimbursements specified in Sec. 2634.304 for public reports but
without amounts or values. Once GSA adjusts minimal value for foreign
gifts, OGE will revise the gifts and reimbursements reporting
thresholds of the OGE Form 450 and amend the underlying part 2634
regulation (public financial disclosure reporting would also be
affected). The Office of Government Ethics will advise
[[Page 12018]]
the departments and agencies of any such change and coordinate with OMB
on the paperwork and rulemaking aspects of the revision.
The Office of Government Ethics will continue to make the OGE Form
450 available to departments and agencies and their reporting employees
in paper and through the Forms, Publications & Other Ethics Documents
section of OGE's Internet Web site (address: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.usoge.gov). The
latter method allows employees two different options for preparing
their report on a computer, although a printout and manual signature of
the form are still required unless specifically approved otherwise by
OGE. Moreover,OGE also permits departments and agencies to develop or
utilize their own electronic versions of the OGE Form 450 provided they
precisely duplicate the paper original to the extent technically
possible. While OGE sees no legal bar to electronic filing and
electronic signatures for the OGE Form 450, agencies must meet the
requirements of the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) and
other applicable laws and issues such as security, verification, non-
repudiation, etc. Those agencies seeking to develop or utilize an
electronic version of the OGE Form 450, and who have not so informed
OGE, are asked to advise OGE's Deputy Director for Administration and
Information Management of their intentions to do so and to provide
assurance of their adherence to the previously mentioned requirements.
Since 1992 various departments and agencies have developed, with
OGE review/approval, alternative reporting formats, such as
certificates of no conflict, for certain classes of employees. Other
agencies provide for additional disclosures pursuant to independent
organic statutes and in certain other circumstances when authorized by
OGE. In 1997, OGE itself developed the new OGE Optional Form 450-A
(Confidential Certificate of No New Interests (Executive Branch)) for
possible agency and employee use in certain years, if applicable. That
optional form continues in use at various agencies. However, the OGE
Form 450 remains the uniform executive branch report form for most of
those executive branch employees who are required by their agencies to
report confidentially on their financial interests. The OGE Form 450 is
to be filed by each reporting individual with the designated agency
ethics official at the executive department or agency where he or she
is or will be employed.
Reporting individuals are regular employees whose positions have
been designated by their agency under 5 CFR 2634.904 as requiring
confidential financial disclosure in order to help avoid conflicts with
their assigned responsibilities; under that section, all special
Government employees (SGE) are also generally required to file.
Agencies may, if appropriate under the OGE regulation, exclude certain
regular employees or SGEs as provided in 5 CFR 2634.905. Reports are
normally required to be filed within 30 days of entering a covered
position (or earlier if required by the agency concerned), and again
annually in the fall if the employee serves for more than 60 days in
the position. As indicated in Sec. 2634.907 of the OGE regulation, the
information required to be collected includes assets and sources of
income, liabilities, outside positions, employment agreements and
arrangements, and gifts and travel reimbursements, subject to certain
thresholds and exclusions.
Most of the persons who file this report form are current executive
branch Government employees at the time they complete their report.
However, some filers are private citizens who are asked by their
prospective agency to file a new entrant report prior to entering
Government service in order to permit advance checking for any
potential conflicts of interest and resolution thereof by agreement to
recuse or divest, obtaining of a waiver, etc. Based on OGE's annual
agency ethics program questionnaire responses for 1999 and 2000 (the
2001 responses have not yet been fully tabulated), OGE estimates that
an average of approximately 268,450 OGE Form 450 report forms will be
filed each year for the next three years throughout the executive
branch. This estimate is based on average number of report forms filed
branchwide for 1999 and 2000 as indicated in the Questionnaire
responses, some 271,834 in 1999 and 265,053 in 2000, for a total of
536,887, with that number then divided in half and rounded to give the
projected annual average of 268,450 reports. Of these reports, OGE
estimates that no more than between 5% and 10%, or some 13,422 to
26,845 per year at most, will be filed by private citizens, those
potential (incoming) regular employees whose positions are designated
for confidential disclosure filing as well as potential special
Government employees whose agencies require that they file their new
entrant reports prior to assuming Government responsibilities. No
termination reports are required for the OGE Form 450.
Each filing is estimated to take an average of one and one-half
hours. The number of private citizens whose reports are filed each year
with OGE itself is less than 10, but pursuant to 5 CFR 1320.3(c)(4)(i),
the lower limit for this general regulatory-based requirement is set at
10 private persons (OGE-processed reports). This yields an annual
reporting burden of 15 hours, the same as in OGE's current OMB
inventory for this information collection. The remainder of the private
citizen reports are filed with other departments and agencies
throughout the executive branch.
Public comment is invited on the unrevised OGE Form 450 as set
forth in this notice, including specifically views on the need for and
practical utility of this proposed unmodified collection of
information, the accuracy of OGE's burden estimate, the enhancement of
quality, utility and clarity of the information collected, and the
minimization of burden (including the use of information technology).
Comments received in response to this notice will be summarized
for, and may be included with, OGE's future request for OMB paperwork
approval for the proposed slightly revised OGE Form 450. Any comments
received will also become a matter of public record. After reviewing
any comments and deciding on the proposed revisions to the form, OGE
will publish a second paperwork notice in the Federal Register to
inform the agencies and the public at the time it submitted the request
for OMB paperwork approval.
Approved: March 12, 2002.
Amy L. Comstock,
Director, Office of Government Ethics.
[FR Doc. 02-6432 Filed 3-15-02; 8:45 am]
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