BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 338
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Date of Hearing: May 27, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 338 (Wagner) - As Amended: April 15, 2011
Policy Committee: Business and
Professions Vote: 7 - 1
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
VOTE ONLY
SUMMARY
This bill requires the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) to
submit to the Legislature all disapproved regulations packages
where the disapproval was the result of OAL determining that the
agency exceeded its statutory authority in developing the
regulations. In addition, this bill extends from 30 days to 90
days the effective date of a regulation or an order of appeal
date after the date of filing with the Secretary of State (SOS).
FISCAL EFFECT
1)Costs of this legislation should be minor and absorbable
within OAL's existing resources because it is very rare for a
proposed regulations package to be rejected on the grounds
that it exceeds statutory authority.
2)Minor and absorbable costs for the workload associated with
processing "good cause" requests to enact legislation earlier
than the 90-day effective date.
COMMENTS
1)Purpose . According to the author's office the process for the
approval of the adoption, amendment or repeal of a regulation
excludes the Legislature. In addition, the current 30-day time
period for review does not allow enough time for the
regulations being acted upon to be properly reviewed before
they are enacted.
AB 338
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The author addresses that concern in this bill in two ways.
First, the bill will require that the OAL send a copy of each
disapproved regulation to the Legislature in cases where the
regulation was disapproved because OAL found the agency
exceeded its statutory authority in developing the regulation.
Secondly, from the day a regulation is submitted to the
Secretary of State, it will be 90 days before the regulation
can go into effect, rather than the 30 days in current law.
2)Background . The Administrative Procedures Act (APA) governs
the adoption of regulations by state agencies for purposes of
ensuring they are clear, necessary, legally valid, and
available to the public. In seeking adoption of a proposed
regulation, state agencies must comply with procedural
requirements that include publishing the proposed regulation
along with a supporting statement of reasons; mailing and
publishing a notice of the proposed action 45 days before a
hearing or before the close of the public comment period; and
submitting a final statement to OAL that summarizes and
responds to all objections, recommendations and proposed
alternatives raised during the public comment period. The OAL
is then required to approve or reject the proposed regulation
within 30 days.
OAL is responsible for reviewing administrative regulations
proposed by over 200 state agencies for compliance with the
standards set forth in the APA, for transmitting these
regulations to SOS and for publishing regulations in the
California Code of Regulations. Existing law requires OAL to
review all regulations for necessity and non-duplication, and
requires OAL to print a summary of all regulations filed with
SOS in the previous week in the California Regulatory Notice
Register. On average, OAL reviews 700 regulations packages
per year. Those packages can be anywhere from 1 to 400 pages
long. In 2010, over 5,000 different regulations sections were
reviewed by OAL.
3)Related Legislation . Over the last two years, dozens of bills
have been introduced in the Legislature that attempt to
change, streamline, or improve the regulations process. Among
the bills pending in the Assembly are AB 127 (Logue), AB 213
(Silva), AB 338 (Wagner), AB 410 (Swanson), AB 425 (Nestande),
AB 429 (Knight), AB 535 (Morrell), AB 530 (Smyth), AB 586
(Garrick), AB 632 (Wagner), AB 691 (Perea), AB 1213 (Nielsen),
AB 338
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and AB 1322 (Bradford).
Analysis Prepared by : Julie Salley-Gray / APPR. / (916)
319-2081