Senate committee adopts amendment letting commission members request rule discussions

At a meeting of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources, senators debated and adopted an amendment to Senate Bill 211 that changes how members of an unnamed commission can raise rules and regulations for consideration.

The adopted amendment strikes language that would have required commission members to take certain actions and instead allows members to submit proposed rules and regulations to the commission. Senator Shane later read additional language into the record: "The commission may, by majority vote, direct the secretary to research, assess, develop, or change any existing or potential rule and regulation." The committee adopted the amendment after discussion and amendments.

The change was pitched by Senator Francisco as a way to make the process more permissive, enabling members to get topics on the agenda rather than being blocked. Francisco said the wording "would allow the chair or the majority of the commission to request the discussion of a rule and regulation to be added to the commission's agenda." Several proponents had testified that commission members felt shut out when only the secretary could propose or discuss a regulation.

Revisor Lawrence told the committee that "there is not a specific definition" for the term "proposed" when applied to rules and regulations and said she "would never call regulations that haven't been submitted to the attorney general for review to be proposed." That exchange underpinned part of the committee's concern about expecting individual commissioners to bring fully drafted regulatory language forward.

Senator Shane and others raised a separate legal concern: proponents wanted the commission, by majority vote, to be able to initiate the regulatory drafting process, while some members worried that allowing a single member too much authority could lead to unilateral actions. Senator Schenge described the proponents' request as seeking the ability to "initiate the process of drafting a regulation according to the majority interest of the majority vote of the body of the commission," and said he was unsure whether the current amendment fully accomplished that aim. Senator Reichman and Senator Alley also voiced caution that the change should require majority support of commissioners before the commission moved forward on drafting or proposing regulations.

Lawmakers also noted a fiscal concern in the bill's fiscal note: if individual commissioners can submit items that reach the stage of a "proposed" regulation, the commission or individual commissioners might need legal services to get a draft to the point where it could be considered "proposed," which could increase costs.

The committee did not send the full bill out of committee at this meeting. The chair asked Senator Shane to work with the reviser to prepare a revised amendment or "balloon" for future consideration, saying the committee would not pass the bill out that day but would revisit it once language is finalized.

The amendment adopted changes committee practice and the statutory language tied to SB 211; the bill itself remains pending and will return to committee with revised language for further consideration.