Senate Commerce Committee rejects final rule 17.0101.305.01.a

The Senate Commerce and Human Resources Committee voted to reject final rule 17.0101.305.01.a during its meeting, reversing a portion of a recent action on the pending rules docket 17-0101-2301.

The motion to reject the final rule was made by Senator Foreman and seconded by Senator Lakey. Lauren Meiser, regulatory and legislative affairs bureau chief at the Division of Financial Management (DFM), told the committee the action was necessary because the committee had previously rejected the pending-rule deletion and that left the full sentence in effect as the final rule. "I think the next motion needs to be the rejection of the final rule, of 17.0101.305.01.a," Meiser said, explaining that the committee must reject the entire subsection A to remove the sentence now present in the final rule.

Senators discussed whether the earlier motion accomplished the full removal. Senator Lakey asked whether the intent was to remove subsection A in its entirety; Meiser confirmed that rejecting the final rule section would accomplish that. Senator Foreman withdrew his earlier procedural motion and offered a new, explicit motion: "I move to reject final rule 17.0101.305.01.a." The committee voted without recorded opposition; the chair announced, "Ayes have it," and the committee recorded that the final rule had been rejected.

The committee returned to its agenda after the vote. The action affects the text identified in docket 17-0101-2301 and was described by staff as a technical correction to align the final rule with the committee's intent.

Staff commentary at the meeting emphasized the procedural difference between rejecting a pending-rule change (which had left the final sentence intact) and rejecting the final rule language itself; the committee's vote addressed that distinction.