Comment on FR Doc # 2026-13281

I am against this proposal for the stated points below: The proposal weakens public accountability precisely where it matters most 1. It narrows what counts as a "standard, criteria, or guideline" — and Congress didn't ask for that narrowing. Section 14(a) of the FRRRPA (16 U.S.C. 1612(a)) requires the Forest Service to give the public "adequate notice and an opportunity to comment" on the formulation of standards, criteria, and guidelines. The rule redefines that statutory phrase to mean only "binding direction that employees are generally expected to follow," while recasting the entire Forest Service Handbooks — currently subject to part 216 — as merely "advisory and informational guidance" employees can disregard at will. That reclassification is doing enormous legal work: it moves a large body of substantive, technical direction (grazing permit administration, special-use authorizations, road rights-of-way, pesticide-use coordination, civil rights procedures) outside the reach of notice-and-comment, based on a label change rather than a change in what the guidance actually does in practice. 2. Removing rescission from "formulation" creates a one-way ratchet. Under the amended §216.1(b), issuing or revising a directive can trigger notice-and-comment, but rescinding one cannot. That asymmetry means the Agency can quietly eliminate protections, procedures, or public-facing commitments — even ones the public fought to get included — without any obligation to warn anyone or take comment. A public participation regime that only runs in one direction is not really a participation regime. 3. The agency's own analysis concedes this hits Tribes hard, yet the rule proceeds anyway. The Tribal Consultation section is unusually candid: the Department states outright that the rule "would have substantial direct effects on Indian Tribes... on the relationship between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities" between them. That's a significant admission, not boilerplate. Publishing a proposed rule in the Federal Register with a 30-day comment window, before or concurrent with that required government-to-government consultation, risks treating consultation as a formality layered on top of an already-decided policy rather than as an input into it. 4. "Broadly accessible... such as a web page" is a weaker notice standard than it looks. Removing the Federal Register/newspaper-of-record option and the mandatory physical mailing address may be framed as modernization, but it also means the Agency alone decides what counts as sufficiently "broad" notice, with no fallback if an agency website is poorly indexed, hard to find, or later reorganized. Communities without reliable internet access — including many rural and Tribal communities directly affected by Forest Service programs — lose a guaranteed channel for both receiving notice and submitting comment. 5. Discretion to deviate from binding Manual direction is expanding at the same time oversight is contracting. The new §200.4(b)(1) lets officials depart from mandatory Manual direction whenever it's "in the public interest" and "promptly documented" — a lower bar than the "extreme or highly unusual circumstances" standard it replaces. Paired with the shrinking scope of notice-and-comment, the net effect is more agency discretion with less external check on how that discretion is used. 6. Categorizing this as non-significant under E.O. 12866 may understate its real-world reach. The rule touches permit fee structures, environmental review methodologies, administrative appeal procedures, and penalties on non-agency parties — the very list of topics the Department itself flags as likely embedded in current Handbooks. Treating a rule with this scope as procedural housekeeping, rather than a substantive change affecting permittees, grazing lessees, and outside contractors, may not capture the actual stakes for people who rely on those Handbooks today.