New regs for Thursday: 911 service, whistleblowers and rare cacti

Thursday’s edition of the Federal Register contains new rules from the Federal Communications Commission for 911 service providers, revisions to regulations that protect whistleblowers from the Office of Special Counsel, a proposal from the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the habitats of rare cacti and catch limits for blueline tilefish.

Here’s what is happening.

911: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to make sure 911 is a reliable service. The commission has proposed amending its 911 reliability certification rules. The new rules would require service providers to give public notice when major changes are made to multi-state 911 networks and services, requires providers get approval from the commission to discontinue an existing 911 service and requires entities that want to offer 911 services to certify that they are capable of providing reliable network.  

{mosads}The rule also designated certain 911 service providers to take the lead responsibility for coordinating and notifying the commission and other service providers of a 911 outage.

The commission said there have been a number of 911 outages and service disruptions in the last year as the technology changes to create an interstate system. In April 2014, a software coding error at a Colorado-based 911 provider’s call routing facility led to a loss of 911 service for more than 11 million people in seven states — Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington — for up to six hours.

“The American public must have confidence that 911 will work every time help is needed,” the commission said in its rule making. “Any failure to meet this expectation puts individual lives at stake and erodes vital public trust in our nation’s emergency services.”

The public has 60 days to comment.

Whistleblowers: The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is considering revising its regulations to allow federal contractors, subcontractors and grantees to file whistleblower reports.

Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and the Whistleblower Protection Act to encourage federal employees to report government fraud, waste and abuse, but the OSC said the federal work force has changed significantly since then.

“In the modern workforce, employees of contractors, subcontractors, and grantees (collectively ‘contractors’) often work alongside Federal employees, having similar if not identical duties,” the agency said in its proposed rule-making. “Thus contractors are similarly situated to observe or experience the same type of wrongdoing as are Federal employees.

Giving contractors a safe channel to report wrongdoing within the government, the OSC said, would only advance the purpose of the original law.

The public has 60 days to comment.

Rare cacti: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) wants to protect the habitats of the Florida semaphore cactus and the aboriginal prickly-apple cactus by listing them as critical under the Endangered Species Act.

A total of 4,411 acres in Miami-Date and Monroe Counties in Florida would be protected for the cactus and 3,444 acres in Manatee, Charlotte, Sarasota and Lees counties, Florida would received critical habitat designations for the prickly-apple. The public has 60 days to comment.

The cacti species are at risk due to an increase in poaching. The FWS said rare cacti are valuable to collectors and there remains an imminent threat of collection.

The public has 60 days to comment.

Blueline tilefish: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is considering a rule that would establish commercial and recreational catch limits for blueline tilefish found in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic Ocean.

The rule would also give NOAA the ability to close fishing season for blueline tilefish if fishermen exceed annual catch limits before a fishing season is over.

The public has 30 days to comment.