HB 168-REPEAL ADMIN. REG. REVIEW COMMITTEE  4:28:45 PM CHAIR MEYER announced the consideration of HB 168. 4:29:22 PM REPRESENTATIVE MIKE CHENAULT, Alaska State Legislature, Juneau, Alaska, sponsor of HB 168, provided an overview as follows: House Bill 168 repeals that statutes pertaining to the Administrative Regulation Review Committee (ARRC). According to an analysis that was provided by Legislative Research, the ARRC has not overturned any regulations as a result of these committee hearings. Although AS 24.20.445 provides that the committee can suspend regulations for certain amount of time, the Alaska Supreme Court found in a 1980 case that the Legislature has no implied power to veto agency regulations by informal legislative action and such action would violate Article 2 of the state constitution. The actions that are available for the ARRC are to introduce legislation to supersede or to nullify regulations; however, Legislative Research was not able to find any effort to do so from 2000 to the present. REPRESENTATIVE CHENAULT summarized as follows: What we are doing is trying to get rid of a committee that we see no real value in. As I stated, it hasn't introduced any legislation committee-wise on a number of years, even though they have had a number of meetings, no legislation has been introduced. Also, you have before you House Concurrent Resolution 10 which would allow the jurisdiction of standing committees to oversee the purposed or adopted regulations to replace regulation oversite that is currently under ARRC. CHAIR MEYER asked that Mr. Wright highlight the bill's sectional analysis. 4:32:23 PM TOM WRIGHT, Staff, Representative Chenault, Alaska State Legislature, explained that there were four pages that repealed 23 sections and the main section, section 3, deletes the regulations for the ARRC as follows: Review of administrative regulations by standing committees of the Legislature and it allows a standing committee of jurisdiction consistent with the Legislature's Uniform Rules and that's why HCR 10 is in front of you, to review or purposed or adopted regulation an amendment of a regulation or a repeal of a regulation, and it repeals language stating before the date the regulation scheduled by a department or agency to be adopted, amended or repealed. He summarized that the rest of the sections were conforming, any reference to the ARRC were deleted. CHAIR MEYER said he believed that the Legislature has not budgeted for ARRC for some time. REPRESENTATIVE CHENAULT replied that ARRC was not funded last year and confirmed that there was no money in the budget for the present year. CHAIR MEYER commented that when ARRC was first started that the intent was good. He opined that as regulations get written that sometimes the result was not the bill's intention. He asserted that having oversite over regulations was important but noted that HB 168 purposes that standing committees would have jurisdiction. 4:34:33 PM SENATOR GIESSEL disclosed that she served on ARRC for four year. She confirmed that the committee never repealed any regulation. She noted one incident where ARRC received a lot of public comment that resulted in the committee convincing a department not to put out a certain regulation package; however, she conceded that the same process could have been done by a legislator at any time. She pointed out that ARRC had a substantial budget appropriation with a designated staff member who had to follow all the regulation packages that came out. She concurred that eliminating ARRC would save money and the action was positive. MR. WRIGHT recounted receiving notice from Legislative Legal on problematic regulations when he served in the speaker's office. He noted that he passed the notices on to ARRC and disclosed that he did not remember any hearings based on the notices that he forwarded. He pointed out that when a somewhat ominous regulation is enacted that the public will let legislators know that they do not like it and referenced a recent airplane tax that the administration decided not to go forward with. He concurred with Senator Giessel that individual legislators have the right to introduce legislation to repeal a regulation. 4:36:36 PM SENATOR GIESSEL disclosed that she has introduction two bills during the current session that will repeal regulations. She agreed with Mr. Wright that legislators can certainly carry legislation to repeal regulations. REPRESENTATIVE CHENAULT disclosed that his office has also introduced legislation over the years to repeal statutes that no longer worked. CHAIR MEYER asked to confirm that one of Representative Chenault's bills repealed branding. REPRESENTATIVE CHENAULT answered yes. CHAIR MEYER asked how long ARRC has been in existence. MR. WRIGHT stated that ARRC was created in 2003-2004. REPRESENTATIVE CHENAULT informed that ARRC has been in effect since the early 1980s. He noted that his office had Legislative Research go back to 2003, the Twenty-third Legislature. He disclosed that ARRC had 30 meetings since 2003 and noted that 15 meetings occurred in 2013-2014 during the Twenty-eighth Legislature, but the average year since 2003 had between 2 to 5 meetings. 4:38:23 PM CHAIR MEYER closed public testimony. 4:38:52 PM SENATOR GIESSEL moved to report HB 168, version 30-LS0682\A from committee with individual recommendations and attached zero fiscal note. 4:39:09 PM CHAIR MEYER announced that there being no objection, the motion carried. 4:39:13 PM At ease.