Delays to CBP Rulings Among Likely Results of Sequestration, Says CBP's Gina

The planned budget cuts of sequestration set to hit the U.S. government March 1 will likely slow down the processing of ruling requests from those involved in international trade, said Al Gina, assistant commissioner in the CBP Office of International Trade. Gina spoke Feb. 28 at the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization conference in Arlington, Va. CBP has previously said it expects some slowdown to trade processing at the border and potentially some cutbacks on intellectual property rights enforcement and its efforts toward the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) as a result of sequestration.

The CBP Office of Regulations and Rulings puts out some 6,000 rulings in response to importer questions per year, said Gina. They're produced by several hundred lawyers and import specialists and if the agency is required to reduce the workforce by 10-15 percent, "there is probably going to be a 10 to 15 percent increase in wait times," said Gina. There remains significant uncertainty about the results of sequestration because CBP hasn't gotten specific budgetary information yet. Specifics are being held until sequestration officially hits, he said. Also of concern for the CBP budget is the March 27 expiration of the continuing resolution that is now funding government operations, said Gina. The agency must give employees a 30-day notice of a furlough, meaning they wouldn't take effect until April, so it's unclear how CBP operations will be funded at that point.

The Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service is unlikely to need to furlough its employees, said Ginger Murphy, assistant deputy administrator at APHIS. Instead APHIS has kept open a number of vacancies, shifting those responsibilities to other employees, she said. That's also true of the Food and Drug Administration, said Domenic Veneziano, acting director in the Office of Import Enforcement at the FDA. Still, the import process relies heavily on conditional releases from CBP, meaning that delay will create delays elsewhere in the processing, he said.

(See ITT's Online Archives 13022528 for summary of operational effects on CBP as result of the sequestration.)

Too Many Lawyers

Information sharing among the agencies at the border still faces several obstacles, said Gina. The agencies are dealing with "the law of unintended consequences" because they must deal with the privacy laws, proprietary information requirements, third-party disclosures and agency authorities, which limit the interoperability of government processes, he said. "Just because CBP has the authority to collect ten pieces of information, partnering government agencies, by their laws, [may] only have the authority to collect six," he said. The trade community is also reluctant to give more information because it may mean for increased examinations, said Gina.

There are two solutions in moving toward better information sharing, other than keeping the lawyers out of the process, joked Gina. One of which is a joint interagency task force, which would allow the agencies to sign on to a single memorandum of understanding (MOU), rather than MOUs between each of the 47 agencies, he said. The opportunity is to share results of targeting, rather than specific information, something the agency did previously when it added operations in Canadian ports, he said. That way, one agency can give its risk assessment, which may vary from CBP's, to give a better idea of risk, said Gina. -- Tim Warren