Justification Document

OMB Control Number: 0560-0229

Title of Clearance: County Committee (COC) Election

Agency Form Number affected by Change Worksheet: Revised FSA-669A-2.

Other Changes: The proposed FSA-669A-2 is to be used for the COC appointment process as described below.

The proposed form is modified to make an appointment of Socially Disadvantaged (SDA) member by the Secretary of Agriculture in the election process. FSA is still using the FSA-669A for the County Committee election. There are no changes to the burden hours since FSA is still using the same number in the approved information collection request.

 

COC members in counties which have been identified as needing SDA representation can now be either elected through the normal election process or appointed by the Secretary.  However, they will have the same duties and responsibilities whether they are elected or appointed.  The changes applied to the FSA-669A-2 are only those which make it suitable for obtaining nominations for an appointment as opposed to obtaining nominations for an election. 

The form FSA-669A will continue to be used for regular COC elections.  To make the form suitable for use in the appointment of COC members, the following changes have been made. 

Page 2, Block #3 the words “placed on the ballot” have been removed and replaced with “submitted as a candidate for appointment to the County FSA Committee.”  The sentence now reads, “I hereby agree to have my name submitted as a candidate for appointment to the County FSA Committee, that I will serve if elected...”  The check boxes in block #3 were removed as they were referring to the counting of ballots for the election, which will not be done in the appointment process. 

The word “Election” has been replaced with “Appointment” in the title of the form, and SDA was added before Appointment to make it clear that the appointment is to be an SDA. 

Block 3A. SIGNATURE OF NOMINEE contains a check box to use for write-ins.  Write-ins are only applicable to elections, so the check box line was removed. 

Block 8. NOMINATOR’S CERTIFICATION had the following words removed:  “in the next County FSA Committee election for the county.” And replaced with for “County FSA Committee appointment.”  The revised sentence now reads, “If this nomination is by other than self, the following eligible voter or representative of a community based organization hereby nominates the afore-named person to be a candidate for County FSA Committee appointment.”

The VOLUNTARY INFORMATION FOR MONITORING PURPOSES had the last sentence removed and replaced with, “Failure to furnish the requested information may result in not being selected as an Appointed SDA Member.”  On the FSA-669A it read, “This information will not be used in evaluating your nomination or to discriminate against you in any way.”

In the INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMPLETING THIS FORM section, item 3 was removed.  It said, “The nominee must check one of the boxes to indicate a preference regarding the settling of tied votes.”  This does not apply to the appointment process. 

The date for the form to be received in the county office was changed to fit in with the appointment process.

In the privacy act statement the word “election” was removed from 2 places and replaced with “nominees for appointment” or “nomination for appointment”. 

On Page 1 similar changes were made to remove references to elections and replace with nomination for appointment wording, and describe the intent of the revised form as it relates to the nomination process. 

Eligible producers and groups representing SDA producers will be asked to submit nominations using this form to the local county office.  The county committee will verify the eligibility of the nominees, and send those who are eligible to the State Committee for final selection.

FSA will have a Spanish version of Form 669A-2, but at present the Spanish version is not completed and we will submit another change worksheet for approval of the Spanish version once it is completed.