The Department of Labor has announced a brief extension of the comment period on its fiduciary reproposal — and set a date for a public hearing.
The comment period for what the DOL calls the Conflict of Interest Notice of Proposed Rulemaking has been extended by 15 days — from 75 to 90 days — which the Labor Department said means that the opportunity for public comments on this proposal may be over 140 days.
A notice announcing the extension of the comment period, as well as the dates of the public hearings, which will take place during the week of Aug. 10, 2015, will be published in a forthcoming edition of the Federal Register.
The Labor Department reiterated its intention to hold a public hearing within 30 days of the close of the initial comment period, after which it said the comment period will reopen until approximately two weeks after the hearing transcript is published — a process that would provide an additional 30 to 45 days of public comment. The Labor Department noted that, in total, the 75-day comment period would have provided between 111 and 127 days of public comment, a period that it said was “considerably longer” than the typical comment period for EBSA’s other proposed rulemakings, and one that “takes into account the views of stakeholders who have asked the Department not to alter its timeline for the comment period at all.”
That said, the comment period for the original 2010 proposal was 90 days, extended 3 weeks after numerous requests.
