BILL NUMBER: S6916

SPONSOR: JACOBS
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the state administrative procedure act, in relation to
increasing the revised rule public comment period from thirty days to
forty-five days

 
PURPOSE:

The purpose of this bill is to amend the State Administrative Procedure
Act (SAPA), to allow more time to comment on proposed rules that agen-
cies have revised.

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1: Amends the State Administrative Procedure Act (SAPA) Section
202, subdivision 4-a, requiring state agencies to allow for 45-days,
instead of 30-days, public comment when the agency revises a rule
proposal.
              

Section 2: establishes the effective date.

 
EXISTING LAW:

State Administrative Procedure Act 202-4a

 
JUSTIFICATION:

Regulated entities and legislators have complained that the revised rule
making 30-day comment period, currently required, is too short of a
period to review and properly comment on agency revised rulemakings. The
Administrative Regulations Review Commission has received comments stat-
ing that, at least, a 45-day comment period should be allowed when an
agency decides to make substantive revisions to a proposed rule making.

The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently proposed,
revised and adopted substantial changes to the rules that implement the
solid waste program in New York. The rules affected landfills, mulch
facilities, recycling businesses, waste tire operations, metal process-
ing, vehicle dismantling, combustion facilities and oil processing. In
short, Thousands of business owners were affected. DEC received more
than 5000 public comments, so many that Senators' Catharine Young and
Chris Jacobs and Assemblymembers' Steve Englebright and Aravella Simotas
formally requested DEC to extend the original 45-day public comment
period. DEC graciously extended the comment period to 180 days since the
Department had received thousands of comments. The Department then
revised the rule making, taking into account many of the comments. The
revised rulemaking was issued and commenced a 30-day public comment
period required by SAPA 202-4a.  Even though DEC only had to wait 30
more days, the Department again graciously accepted revised comments for
a longer period. The rule was adopted into law on September 20, 2017.

This example is a best-case scenario; the Agency listened to state
legislators, businesses and environmentalists asking for more time to
digest this very important rulemaking and DEC even allowed for more time
than statutorily allowed on the revised rulemaking comment period of
30-days. However, many agencies merely abide by the SAPA requirements of
a 45-day comment period for proposed rules and a 30-day comment period
for revised rules.

This legislation is necessary to change the statutory time frame for
revised rule makings from the current 30-day window to a full 45-days so
that businesses, environmentalists and the general public have ample
time to make competent comments on revised rules. A 30-day comment peri-
od is simply too short and it should be increased to 45-days.

 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

New Bill

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect immediately.