              Summary of April 23, 2015 Fee Rule Update With the
                       Environmental Technology Council
                                       
* Rich LaShier and Bryan Groce attended the quarterly meeting of the Environmental Technology Council (ETC) at their offices at 1112 16[th] St., NW in DC.  We had been asked by David Case to provide an update on the Fee Rule and on the progress with the system procurement.
* Rich began the discussion with a brief procurement update that had been provided to Rich in writing by Tony Raia. 
      o We told ETC that EPA was finalizing its procurement strategy for the e-Manifest system.  Congress recently passed the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Review Act (FITARA), which requires review and approval of IT acquisitions by the Agencies' CIOs.  So, we are now going through this new FITARA review process with Ann Duncan, who was appointed only last month as EPA's CIO.  The process of bringing Ms. Duncan up to speed on e-Manifest and the new FITARA review has caused a small delay in our finalization of the system procurement strategy.
      o EPA has finished work on the e-Manifest architecture planning documents.  These documents, which were shared as drafts with ETC members during webinars in the past year, will inform the Request for Proposals (RFP) that we plan to soon issue.
      o Under our current schedule, we expect to issue a draft acquisition notice in May, and then issue the full RFP by June 2015.  The procurement process should take about 6 to 12 months to complete, and our goal is to have the contract awarded by the 2[nd] Quarter of FY 2016.
* Bryan Groce then made a presentation summarizing the electronic fee payment options and methods that had recently been discussed by the Fee Rule workgroup.  
* We particularly wanted to obtain ETC members' feedback on the electronic payment methods supported by pay.gov, and the two key options of: (1) payment by TSDFs of an advance fixed payment each month, calculated from the previous year's manifest usage, or (2) payment as accounts receivable, after invoicing TSDFs for the previous month's actual usage of manifests in the system.
* Bryan began the discussion by clarifying that regardless of which key payment option were adopted (advance payments or invoicing accounts receivable), TSDFs would be expected to create payment accounts in Pay.gov, and use one of the electronic payment methods supported by Pay.gov, that is, Automated Clearing House (ACH) debits from bank accounts, credit card payments, or debit card payments, or PayPal or Dwolla.  
      o In response, we heard some concern from Veolia whether the monthly user fee payments might exceed the credit limits of the companies' credit accounts.  This might require an adjustment in the billing frequency to keep individual payments within the credit provider's limits, or might require the TSDF to arrange to have its credit limits expanded to cover the likely amount of user fee payments.
      o Another ETC member questioned if TSDF companies would want to use the ACH bank account debit method.  Companies may have different preferences among the allowed electronic payment options.
      o An ETC member asked if the payments would be collected at the company level or by EPA ID# from each TSDF site.  We responded that we would bill by site ID#.
* Bryan next introduced the pre-payment option.  Bryan explained that there were two variations of this:  (1) One payment in advance for the entire year of projected manifest usage, and (2) Twelve regular or fixed advance payments on the 1[st] of each month, with a 13[th] payment invoiced at the end of the year to reconcile actual usage for the year with the projections used to calculate the monthly payments.  
* We understand from prior meetings that ETC opposes the one payment for the year option, as the substantial amount of the one payment would be present difficult optics for the companies' financial managers.  It will be better to make monthly payments.
      o EPA is not now advocating the One annual payment option.
      o Our interest in reviving discussion of advance payments was to get feedback on the option involving 12 fixed payments each month with reconciliation billing at the end of the year.  The TSDF could go online, for example, and self-declare their projected manifest usage for the year, and then calculate the projected fees for the year based on last year's usage.  The projected fee for the year could then be divided by 12 to arrive at the amount of the fixed payment that would be paid on the 1[st] of each month.
      o EPA is examining the 12-payments in advance option because it reduces the administrative cost and burden of invoicing the TSDFs each month.  Since Pay.gov supports a fixed recurring payment as an automatic deduction of a bank account through the ACH, this could be a very convenient and automatic payment option for the companies and EPA.
      o ETC members still had reservations about the 12 advance recurring payment option.  ETC members had doubts whether their companies would want to give EPA access to their funds in advance of services, unless there were some incentive (e.g., a discount?) for doing so.
      o David Case suggested that a better path might be to start out with invoicing TSDFs for manifests actually used each month, but then move to the advance recurring payment model until we have more experience with the numbers of manifests being used by the TSDFs.  
* Bryan then presented on the option of invoicing TSDFs monthly for the previous month's actual manifest usage.  This was definitely the preferred billing option, at least at the outset of system operations.  
      o We were asked how the invoices would be sent.  We responded that either the e-Manifest system would develop an invoice based on manifest usage data, or we might send the manifest usage data to Pay.gov, which offers an e-billing service.
      o Regardless whether EPA's system or Pay.gov sends the electronic invoice, the invoice would then direct the paying TSDF to go to the Pay.gov payment site (they would establish an account here), and make their electronic payment using one of the allowed electronic payment methods (credit card, debit card, ACH, Paypal, etc.).
      o We further indicated that we did not plan on sending paper invoices, nor did we plan on accepting checks as payment.  All invoicing and payments will be processed electronically.
      o Questions were raised about the "premiums" that might appear on invoices.  ETC repeated its earlier concern that there should not be a premium fee assessed when TSDFs make corrections to manifest data.  Any costs associated with making corrections should be included as overhead in the calculation of the general manifest fees, since a premium for corrections would discourage TSDFs from making these corrections to minimize their fee liability.
* We briefly summarized discussions that were ongoing with the workgroup on fee trajectory and fee sanction issues.  There was little support for permit sanctions or for financial assurance, as these were either too severe or too complex.  David suggested that sanctions that shamed delinquent payers might be more appropriate for e-Manifest.  
* We concluded the discussions.  David and the ETC members thanked us for keeping the organization informed of the progress on e-Manifest and of the issues we are exploring in the Fee Rule workgroup.  
