Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations, to which was referred S.B. No. 737 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to automatically repeal, without public notice or public hearing, all administrative rules that were adopted pursuant to a statute or ordinance that has been subsequently repealed.

Your Committee received comments orally from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. The Hawaii Chapter of the Sierra Club provided testimony in opposition to the measure.

Your Committee finds that it is common practice for the Legislature, when enacting a law, to give statutory authority to a public agency to adopt rules that will have the force and effect of law.

However, when statutes are repealed, administrative rules adopted pursuant to the repealed statute are not automatically repealed, and therefore there are many administrative rules in existence with no current statutory authorization. Your Committee finds that agencies are reluctant to repeal such administrative rules due to the high costs associated with compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Therefore, your Committee supports this measure, which will repeal outdated administrative rules automatically, without regard to the APA.

Your Committee amended the measure to require each public agency, including the Judiciary, to review all administrative rules under its jurisdiction, and to report to the appropriate legislative body regarding which rules are automatically repealed pursuant to this measure. Without such a reporting requirement, the public will have no way of knowing which rules are current and which have been repealed.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 737, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 737, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs.