14090 Federal Register / Vol. 89, No. 38 / Monday, February 26, 2024 / Notices 

May 24, 1977; and CEQ regulations (40 CFR 

1500–1508)). 

Stephen G. Tryon, 

Director, Office of Environmental Policy and 

Compliance. 

[FR Doc. 2024–03846 Filed 2–23–24; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4331–27–P 

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

Bureau of Land Management 

[BLM_OR_FRN_MO4500177642] 

Notice of Availability of the Record of 

Decision and Approved Resource 

Management Plan Amendment for the 

Southeastern Oregon Resource 

Management Plan, Vale District, 

Oregon 

AGENCY: Bureau of Land Management, 

Interior. 

ACTION: Notice of availability. 

SUMMARY: The Bureau of Land 

Management (BLM) announces the 

availability of the Record of Decision 

(ROD) for the Approved Resource 

Management Plan (RMP) Amendment 

for the Southeastern Oregon RMP, 

located in the BLM’s Vale District. The 

State Director, Oregon/Washington 

signed the ROD on February 16, 2024, 

which constitutes the decision of the 

BLM and makes the Approved RMP 

Amendment effective immediately. 

DATES: The State Director, Oregon/ 

Washington signed the ROD/Approved 

RMP Amendment on February 16, 2024. 

ADDRESSES: The ROD/Approved RMP 

Amendment is available online at the 

BLM National NEPA Register at https:// 

eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/ 

project/87435/510. Printed copies of the 

ROD/Approved RMP Amendment are 

available for public inspection at the 

BLM Vale District Office, 100 Oregon 

Street, Vale, Oregon 97918, telephone: 

(541) 473–3144. 

A copy of the Protest Resolution 

Report is available at: https://

www.blm.gov/programs/planning-andnepa/public-participation/protestresolution-reports. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Caryn Burri, Planning and 

Environmental Coordinator, Vale 

District Office; telephone: (541) 473– 

3144; email: cburri@blm.gov. 

Individuals in the United States who are 

deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have 

a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, 

TDD, or TeleBraille) to access 

telecommunications relay services for 

contacting Ms. Burri. Individuals 

outside the United States should use the 

relay services offered within their 

country to make international calls to 

the point-of-contact in the United 

States. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The 

Approved RMP Amendment amends the 

existing 2002 Southeastern Oregon 

RMP. The Southeastern Oregon 

planning area covers approximately 4.6 

million acres of public lands in 

Malheur, Grant, Harney, and Baker 

Counties. The Approved RMP 

Amendment provides management 

direction for lands with wilderness 

characteristics; makes planning-areawide travel and transportation/offhighway vehicle (OHV) allocations of 

open, limited, and closed; and provides 

management direction for livestock 

grazing in areas that fail to meet the 

BLM’s Standards for Rangeland Health 

and for processing voluntary livestock 

grazing permit relinquishments. 

The Approved RMP Amendment 

prioritizes the protection of 33 of the 76 

areas the BLM identifies as having 

wilderness characteristics. The 33 

protected areas will be managed as: 

Visual Resource Management Class II 

public lands, which only allows for low 

levels of change to the landscapes’ 

visual character; Land Tenure Zone 1, 

where the BLM retains the lands in 

public ownership for the life of the 

RMP; OHV limited; and exclusion areas 

for major rights-of-way and commercial 

renewable energy projects. No surface 

occupancy for the development and 

extraction of leasable and saleable 

minerals, including new mineral 

material sites, within the protected areas 

is allowed. Where roads form the 

boundary of a protected wilderness 

characteristic unit, a 250-foot 

management setback is established. The 

setback areas total 9,247 acres. 

Under the Approved RMP 

Amendment, two areas totaling 40,368 

acres near the city of Vale, Oregon, will 

be managed as open to OHV use; 

319,501 acres currently classified as 

open will be designated as limited to 

existing routes, resulting in a total 4.5 

million acres of limited OHV 

classification in the planning area; and 

15,829 acres closed to OHV use will 

remain closed. 

The Approved RMP Amendment: (1) 

requires the BLM to consider taking 

action in areas that are not meeting 

Standards for Rangeland Health even if 

existing livestock grazing is not a causal 

factor for non-attainment of the 

standard; (2) clarifies that the BLM will 

not permit increases to animal unit 

months if analysis finds that doing so 

could cause negative impacts to other 

resources in an area where there is 

either no rangeland health assessment 

and evaluation or if the evaluation no 

longer represents the existing resource 

conditions; and (3) requires the BLM to 

review the suitability and compatibility 

of livestock grazing use with other 

existing resources in the permitted area 

when a voluntary permit 

relinquishment is received. If livestock 

grazing is found to be unsuitable and/ 

or incompatible, the area will become 

unavailable to grazing and the forage 

allocation will be made to another 

resource. If grazing is found to be 

suitable and/or compatible, then the 

allocation of forage to livestock grazing 

use would remain in place. The BLM 

could authorize grazing use for the area 

under a grazing permit or designate the 

area as a reserve common allotment. 

The BLM provided the Proposed RMP 

Amendment/Final Environmental 

Impact Statement (PRMPA/FEIS) for a 

30-day public protest period starting on 

June 16, 2023, and received two valid 

protests. The BLM Assistant Director for 

Resources and Planning resolved both 

protests. Responses to protest issues 

were compiled and documented in a 

Protest Resolution Report (see 

ADDRESSES). Minor clarifications to the 

language in the Approved RMP 

Amendment related to the way BLM 

manages Wilderness Study Areas that 

are released from consideration for 

Wilderness designation by Congress 

were made in response to an issue 

raised on this topic in one of the 

protests received. 

The BLM provided the PRMPA/FEIS 

to the Governor of Oregon for a 60-day 

Governor’s consistency review on June 

16, 2023. The Governor’s Office 

identified some concerns and potential 

inconsistencies between the PRMPA 

and State and local plans, policies, and 

programs. The BLM discussed the 

concerns with the Governor’s Office 

and, in response, made minor 

clarifications in the Approved RMP 

Amendment regarding how lands with 

wilderness characteristics that are not 

prioritized for protection will be 

managed and the way in which BLM 

manages Wilderness Study Areas that 

are released from consideration for 

Wilderness designation by Congress. 

The clarifications made to the Approved 

RMP Amendment in response to both 

the issues raised in one of the protests 

received and the Oregon Governor’s 

consistency review were minor and did 

not represent a change requiring the 

BLM to provide the public with an 

opportunity to comment as discussed in 

43 CFR 1610.2(f)(5) and 1610.5–1. 


khammond on DSKJM1Z7X2PROD with NOTICES
Federal Register / Vol. 89, No. 38 / Monday, February 26, 2024 / Notices 14091 

(Authority: 40 CFR 1506.6; 43 CFR 1610.5– 

1) 

Barry R. Bushue, 

State Director. 

[FR Doc. 2024–03766 Filed 2–23–24; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4331–24–P 

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

National Indian Gaming Commission 

Agency Information Collection 

Activities; New Collection: Information 

Management Standard Assessment 

Questionnaires 

AGENCY: National Indian Gaming 

Commission, Interior. 

ACTION: Second Notice of New 

Information Collection; request for 

comments. 

SUMMARY: In accordance with the 

Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 

(PRA), the National Indian Gaming 

Commission (NIGC or Commission) is 

providing notice that it is requesting, 

concurrently with the publication of 

this notice or soon thereafter, for the 

Office of Management and Budget 

(OMB) to review and approve a new 

information collection. 

DATES: The OMB has up to 60 days to 

approve or disapprove information 

collection requests, but may respond 

after 30 days. Therefore, public 

comments should be submitted to OMB 

by no later than March 27, 2024, in 

order to be assured of consideration. 

ADDRESSES: Submit comments directly 

to OMB’s Office of Information and 

Regulatory Affairs, Attn: Policy Analyst/ 

Desk Officer for the National Indian 

Gaming Commission. Comments can 

also be emailed to <OIRA_Submission@

omb.eop.gov>, include reference to 

‘‘NIGC PRA New Collection’’ in the 

subject line. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For 

further information, including copies of 

the proposed collections of information 

and supporting documentation, contact 

Tim Osumi by email at tim.osumi@

nigc.gov, or by telephone at (771) 220– 

3592; or by fax at (202) 632–7066 (not 

toll-free numbers). You may also review 

these information collection requests by 

going to <https://www.reginfo.gov> 

(Information Collection Review, 

Currently Under Review, Agency: 

National Indian Gaming Commission). 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

I. Background 

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act 

(IGRA), Public Law 100–497, 25 U.S.C. 

2701, et seq., was signed into law on 

October 17, 1988. The IGRA established 

the National Indian Gaming 

Commission (NIGC) and outlined a 

comprehensive framework for the 

regulation of gaming on Indian lands. 

Among the IGRA’s requirements is that 

persons who apply for a ‘‘key 

employee’’ (KE) or ‘‘primary 

management official’’ (PMO) position at 

a tribal gaming operation must undergo 

a background investigation 

((§ 2710(b)(2)(F)(i)). Similarly, the IGRA 

requires that persons who have direct or 

indirect financial interest in, or 

management responsibility for, a tribal 

gaming management contract, must 

undergo a background investigation and 

be evaluated for suitability as part of the 

NIGC’s management contract review 

process ((§ 2711(a), (e)(1)(D)). In keeping 

with these background investigative 

statutory requirements, NIGC 

regulations 25 CFR 522.2(g), 25 CFR 

556.4(a)(14), and 25 CFR 537.1(b)(2) 

stipulate that prospective KEs/PMOs 

and management contractors must 

submit their fingerprints to the Federal 

Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and 

undergo a criminal history record 

information (CHRI) check. 

Although CHRI checks are integral to 

the tribal KE/PMO applicant licensing 

process, tribes do not possess the 

necessary statutory authority to directly 

access FBI CHRI for this purpose. The 

NIGC, as a Federal agency empowered 

under the IGRA to access CHRI 

(§§ 2706(b)(3) & (7), 2708), accepts tribal 

fingerprint submissions and transmits 

them to the FBI for this purpose. In 

return, the FBI provides CHRI check 

results to the NIGC and the NIGC shares 

these results with the requesting tribe. 

In this process, the NIGC assumes the 

role of a CJIS (Criminal Justice 

Information Services) Systems Agency 

(CSA), a duly authorized agency on the 

CJIS network that provides service to 

criminal justice users with respect to the 

criminal justice information (from the 

various systems managed by the Federal 

Bureau of Investigations (FBI) CJIS 

Division. 

The roles and responsibilities under 

which the NIGC, FBI, and tribes process 

CHRI checks are memorialized in 

Memoranda of Understanding between 

the FBI and the NIGC and between the 

NIGC and each requesting tribe. One 

such responsibility is to monitor the 

dissemination of CHRI to ensure FBIcompliant privacy and security 

standards are followed. This 

responsibility is detailed in FBI CJIS 

Security Policy, Policy Area 11 

(CJISSECPOL 5.11.2) which specifies 

that the NIGC, as a CSA, is required to 

establish a process to periodically audit 

tribes that receive CHRI to ensure 

compliance with applicable statutes, 

regulations and policies. To fulfill this 

obligation, the NIGC has established a 

CJIS Audit Unit (CAU), which is tasked 

with coordinating with tribal authorities 

to ensure that NIGC-disseminated CHRI 

is handled and managed in accordance 

with applicable statutes, regulations, 

and policies. 

In performing its oversight duties, the 

CAU will deploy questionnaires to 

gather information. This information 

will be used to assess and document 

tribal compliance with privacy and 

security standards and will enable the 

CAU to identify information 

management risk factors that may 

require remediation. Responding to this 

information collection is voluntary, 

however, failure to collect this 

information may impair the NIGC’s 

ability to fulfill its obligations under its 

MOUs with the FBI and its tribal 

partners. Indeed, this information 

collection is a vital tool for the NIGC 

CAU to perform its function and helps 

to ensure that the NIGC can continue to 

support the successful tribal operation 

of tribal gaming under the IGRA. 

II. Data 

Title: Information Management 

Standard Assessment Questionnaires. 

OMB Control Number: 3141–xxxx. 

Brief Description of Collection: 

The collection involves questions that 

seek information about tribal security 

and privacy protections governing the 

processing, handling, and storing of 

NIGC-disseminated CHRI. The questions 

closely track the FBI’s standard CJIS 

compliance questionnaires but have 

been streamlined and adapted to tribal 

specific standards. The information 

collected is related to information 

policies, procedures, and system 

configurations and includes some type 

and amount of measurable evidence that 

confirms their proper implementation. 

Respondents: Indian tribal gaming 

operations. 

Estimated Number of Annual 

Respondents: 140. 

Estimated Number of Annual 

Responses: 140. 

Estimated Time per Response: 37.5 

minutes. 

Frequency of Responses: Annually. 

Estimated Total Annual Burden 

Hours on Respondents: 87.5. 

Estimated Total Non-hour Cost 

Burden: $0. 

Edward Simermeyer, 

Chairman. 

[FR Doc. 2024–03773 Filed 2–23–24; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 7565–01–P 


khammond on DSKJM1Z7X2PROD with NOTICES