National Appeals Division Rules of Procedure

On December 29, 1995, the National Appeals Division (NAD) in the Office of the Secretary published an interim final rule to implement Title II, Subtitle H, of the Federal Crop Insurance Reform and Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994, by setting forth procedures for program participant appeals of adverse decisions by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) agency officials to NAD. The deadline for receipt of comments was March 28, 1996. Nineteen timely public comments were received in response to the interim final rulemaking. The Secretary now issues a final rule for the rules of procedure of NAD and for the technical change regarding authentication of NAD records by the NAD Director. The interim final rulemaking document also included conforming changes to the former appeal rules of USDA agencies whose adverse decisions are now subject to NAD review. This final rulemaking document does not contain final rules for the conforming changes. Those final rules will be issued by the respective agencies at a later date.