Department of Insurance and DOPL brief House Business Committee on rule dockets ahead of negotiated rulemaking

The House Business Committee heard overview presentations from the Idaho Department of Insurance and the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses (DOPL) on Jan. 15 describing rule dockets members will consider this session.

Dean Cameron, director of the Department of Insurance, said the department reviews roughly 20% of its rules each year and that after stakeholder meetings and negotiated rulemaking it is advancing changes to four DOI rules this year: life-settlement cleanup (removing language duplicative of statute); title-insurance adjustments to modernize how funds move through banks or credit unions; clarifications to surplus-lines procedures; and a revision to a fire-code enforcement provision that DOI previously revised with the committee’s input.

On the fire-code matter, Cameron said staff worked with lawmakers after a prior rule included a penalty labeled in the fire code as a misdemeanor; DOI and legislators drafted language the committee supported and DOI will present that adjusted language in the docket. "We passed the rule with the provision that we would come back with language that would meet your satisfaction," Cameron said.

Katie Stewart, bureau chief for DOPL’s Administration Bureau, briefed the committee on a larger set of rule dockets from multiple boards. Stewart said nine boards and three safety programs are participating in 0-based regulation to remove ineffective, outdated or duplicative rules and to renumber chapters to align with the rule-writers manual. DOPL provided a crosswalk that maps old rule numbers to new ones and said it will submit clean copies for the committee’s review.

Stewart listed several notable items in the DOPL package: an updated Liquefied Petroleum Gas chapter adopting the 2024 NFPA standard and standardizing work-experience hours; logging safety rules that function like a safety manual and required modernization of terminology; elevator-safety updates tied to building code; reductions in permit fees under building-related dockets and temporary fee-rule adjustments for boards to comply with last year’s Senate Bill 142; and fee changes for specific boards (the morticians' and geologists' boards increasing fees by 20%, the Real Estate Commission reducing fees by 15%).

Stewart also said the Electrical Board completed negotiated rulemaking with six statewide stakeholder meetings and multiple public hearings and will present negotiated and temporary rules.

Committee members asked clarifying questions; the chair said the committee will begin reviewing dockets next week and can accept an entire docket, reject an entire docket, or reject an identifiable section of a docket (but not make line-by-line edits). The chair also reminded members they will see public hearings when dockets are brought back for formal action.

What’s next: DOI and DOPL will present docket-by-docket materials next week; members may accept, reject or partially reject rule chapters during the committee’s legislative review process.