Marion Connelly (703-235-1488) makes her living by
writing regulations for the National Forest Service. One, if not
the only, task which the bureaucracy has set on Ms. Connelly's
desk is to draft regulatory revisions to Sections 251 and 261 of Title
36 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which would place severe
restrictions on the ability of people to freely gather on public
lands under the jurisdiction of the National Forest Service. The
last information on the status of the anti-public gathering
regulations was that a draft was completed by Ms. Connelly's
office, and had been sent on through bureaucratic channels for
approval, and publication in the Federal Register was expected
within a month or so.
Due to personal interest in keeping abreast of governmental
incursions upon individual freedom, and owing to the interest
expressed by several individuals who have attended Rainbow Family
Gatherings, at 4:30 on January 6, 1991 I initiated a telephone
conversation with Ms. Connelly to determine the status of the
regulations.
Ms. Connelly told me that the regulation "was back on (her)
desk," because it had caused some "legal indigestion." She said
that she was going to begin another draft, but that she was going
to have to "start almost from scratch." She said she would not
have another draft finished sooner than two months (early March).
The Administrative Procedure Act requires the bureaucracies
to publish a "proposed rulemaking" in the Federal Register, then it
requires a sixty day period in which public comments on the
proposal may be submitted, then it requires a Federal Register
publication of a "final rulemaking" -- which should take into
account the public comments on the proposed rulemaking -- finally
(unless the government can show "good cause for suspending the
delay of effectiveness>), there is a thirty day period before the
final rulemaking becomes an enforceable regulation.
What this all indicates to me is that the National Forest
Service will not have succeeded in promulgating any anti-public
gathering regulations before July, 1992. However Marion Connelly
did say that she believes that such a regulation is necessary,
and she is at work on it.