2006-07 Negotiated Rulemaking for Higher Education
Memo from Dan Madzelan to Loans Team Members


DATE : January 29, 2007

TO : Loans Committee Members

FROM : Dan Madzelan

SUBJECT : Materials for the February 5-7 negotiating session

Enclosed are the materials for the next negotiating session. These should be posted to the Department's Negotiated Rulemaking Web site in a few days, but you are, of course, free to share this information as you see fit.

Included in this posting is a single package of draft regulatory language in pdf format. (Assuming you'll want to manipulate the language and would rather not re-type it all, I'll send you a MS Word version tomorrow.) Note that the language itself is provided in redline/strikeout, i.e. "contextual," format and not in the usual and customary amendatory style. Instead, we are interested in using this language as the basis for reaching agreements on the issues under negotiation. The language the Committee ultimately agrees to will be written in the usual amendatory style.

We arranged this package by the loan program(s) affected by the language. See the program/issue number identifier in the lower right-hand corner of each page.

Though we have 22 issues on our negotiating agenda, I'm providing language for 15 of the issues. We need to give one issue, loan discharges for the crime of identity theft, additional attention, so we have no language to share at this time.

We are proposing to eliminate the remaining 6 issues from consideration in this negotiated rulemaking session. Therefore, we have not provided language. In our view, it is not advisable to regulate these issues at this time due to program cost considerations, the existence of other remedies available to address problems, the lack of a statutory basis for a regulatory change, or a possible counterproductive regulatory result. We can discuss the Department's concerns with respect to these 6 issues at the February session.

I want to draw your attention to the two MPN-related issues regarding the retention of records supporting disbursements to students and lender certification of e-signatures. When we began drafting this language it became apparent that the same regulatory provisions overlapped. So, rather than repeating the provisions, we chose to focus the discussion on the two issues programmatically. That is, both issues are discussed for FFEL in the language identified as "FFEL/Perkins 2." Similarly, both issues are discussed for Perkins in the language identified as "FFEL/Perkins 3."

Finally, I'm including a "scorecard" that I hope will be helpful in organizing and tracking our progress on each issue. This initial scorecard shows information for the 22 issues for negotiation. The column labeled "Dec 12-14" reflects the sequence in which we discussed these issues last month. "Identification" is the label we used in the footer on each page of the language to identify the issue being addressed. I think the other columns are self-explanatory.

See you on the 5th.

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Last Modified: 02/22/2007