BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 12
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Date of Hearing: May 13, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
AB
12 (Cooley) - As Amended April 22, 2015
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|Committee: |Administrative Review | | |
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill requires state agencies and departments to review,
adopt, amend or repeal any applicable regulations that are
duplicative, overlapping, inconsistent, or out of date by
January 1, 2018. As part of this process, state agencies and
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departments must hold at least one noticed public hearing, and
accept public comment on proposed revisions, notify the
appropriate policy and fiscal committees of the Legislature of
the proposed revisions, and report to the Governor and the
Legislature. The bill contains a January 1, 2019 sunset date.
FISCAL EFFECT:
1)Annual costs (for two years) to the Office of Administrative
Law (OAL) of approximately $695,000 (GF) for seven additional
positions (five attorneys, one legal analyst, and one office
technician) and additional rent and supplies, to accommodate
the additional workload within the two-year timeframe.
2)One-time costs of approximately $50,000 (GF) to OAL for office
equipment associated with the additional staff.
3)Unknown, but potentially significant costs to state agencies
to review and revise, as necessary, all existing regulations.
Departments with a large number of regulations may require
additional staff, managerial oversight, and administrative
support to accommodate the increased workload, public
hearings, and reporting requirements. There are currently over
200 state agencies and departments with nearly 53,000 active
regulations.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. The author states, "?numerous economists and business
leaders agree that one of the greatest obstacles to California
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job growth is the 'thicket' of government regulations that
constrain business owners." Under current law, any state
agency may review, adopt, amend or repeal any regulation
within its statutory authority at any time. The OAL reports
that as of December 26, 2014, the number of regulations
adopted totaled 67,176. Of those, state agencies had repealed
14,319, or approximately 21%. With 52,857 regulations still
active, the author believes more needs to be done. This bill
requires state agencies to review their regulatory framework
within a two-year timeframe.
2)Background. In October of 2011, the Little Hoover Commission
(LHC) published a report titled, Better Regulation: Improving
California's Rulemaking Process. The LHC included several
recommendations for improving the state's rulemaking process,
including the state establishing a look-back mechanism to
determine if regulations are effective and still needed.
The author's approach to this "look-back mechanism" is to
create a two-year window within which agencies, and the
departments, boards and other units within them, must review
all regulations that pertain to the mission and programs under
their statutory authority. Upon completion of this review,
the identified regulations that are deemed to be duplicative,
overlapping, inconsistent or out of date may be repealed using
the existing processes already provided in the Administrative
Procedures Act (APA).
3)Related Legislation. AB 797 (Steinorth), pending referral in
the Senate, requires a copy of each major regulation submitted
to the Secretary of State (SOS) by the Office of
Administrative Law (OAL) to also be submitted to the
appropriate Legislative policy committees responsible for the
subject matter of the regulation for review.
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Analysis Prepared by:Jennifer Swenson / APPR. / (916)
319-2081