The APA, an important law requiring state agencies to provide public notice and seek input on proposed regulations, took a beating this year. As a way of saving money, the enacted 2008 supplemental budget included a provision allowing the agencies to post notices of their public rule-making proceedings on the Internet only, as opposed to the current newspaper notice requirement. In objecting to that proposal, the ACLU noted the “digital divide” that exists in terms of computer access for some members of the public, the troubles that have existed with the state’s system of electronically posting current regulations, and the effort that advocacy groups would need to exert to follow dozens of state agency rule-making postings in this fashion.
Unfortunately, the enacted 2009 budget went one step further: it includes a provision allowing the Department of Human Services to adopt on an “emergency” basis any and all regulations it deems desirable while implementing new welfare reform provisions. By designating the rules this way, the Department need not seek any public input on its regulations until seven months after their adoption. This provision was added to the budget at the last minute; the House Finance Committee had specifically rejected that approach when it was first proposed by the Governor in his 2008 supplemental budget.
