Committee chair outlines plan to speed administrative rule reviews; flags 5,666 pages across 272 packets

Representative Kendricks, chair of the House Administrative Rules Committee, used the meeting to lay out expectations and a timeline for committee members reviewing proposed administrative rules.

"We have got a few sunset bills to run today out of the committee, and then we'll discuss rules just a little bit," Kendricks said at the start of the session. He told members to read assigned rule packets, annotate the staff email with approvals or concerns, and forward those notes to his office. "When you get done with that rule, forward that email to my email with your notations on it, whether it's approved or disapproved or whatever notes that you have," he said.

Kendricks emphasized a two-member assignment approach for rule packets so members can confer with each other and avoid duplicate work. He described a longstanding administrative workload: "We had 272 packets of rules, which resulted in 5,666 pages of rules. 5,666 pages that we're talking about adding to our administrative code." He asked members to be mindful of the workload and to move quickly as session deadlines approach.

Committee members raised process questions in floor-style exchanges. Representative Stairs asked about taking public opposition into account for rules with industry pushback, noting the Funeral Directors Association had objected to recent Funeral Board rules. Kendricks advised that members check statutory authority first and, if necessary, request written public comments and convene parties to discuss disagreements: "Another thing you might do on that is listen to that, listen to the association, listen to the funeral board, but you might also reach out to them and say, were there any written public comments... I would like to have a copy of them to follow through." Representative Eves and others endorsed convening both sides for complicated items.

Kendricks described the administrative rule pipeline: agencies draft rules, include public comments or hearings where required, boards adopt rules, the Secretary of State files them, and committee staff distribute them to members. He said he is working with the Senate counterpart to run multiple resolutions to clear noncontroversial items and to reserve focused meetings for larger or contentious rule sets. He also referenced legislation under consideration that would affect the administrative rule process: "...House Bill 2,728. I hope to see on the House floor sometime next week, that that addresses some of the administrative process and how we can put some restrictions on that to maybe move that back to where it's the legislature that's doing the legislating." The transcript does not provide final text for HB 2728 or its specific provisions.

Kendricks asked members to sign up for additional packets if they could and to coordinate assignments with staff member Laurie and Melanie in the chair's office, who will distribute materials and maintain a master list. He said he planned to send a weekly status update and to introduce multiple resolutions rather than a single omnibus measure: "What I would like to do is maybe send out an email to the committee when I get ready to put those resolutions together and say, okay, I'm look at putting these 10 agencies together in a resolution to run and and I'll bring it to the committee for us to vote on that as a whole." The committee did not take final votes on these procedural plans during the meeting.

Next steps: committee members were asked to forward annotated rule packets to the chair by email, coordinate with staff Laurie for specific requests, and prepare for targeted committee meetings and multiple resolutions later in the session.