Regulations: agency statement of reasons.

Existing law, the Administrative Procedure Act, governs the procedure for the adoption, amendment, or repeal of regulations by state agencies and for the review of those regulatory actions by the Office of Administrative Law. Existing law requires an agency to submit to the office, among other things, an initial statement of reasons for proposing the adoption, amendment, or repeal of a regulation that includes, among other things, a description of reasonable alternatives to the regulation. Existing law requires, for a regulation that would mandate the use of specific technologies or equipment or prescribe specific actions or procedures, that the imposition of performance standards be considered as an alternative and that the initial statement of reasons include a statement of reasons why the agency believes that mandates or prescriptive standards are required. This bill would, from January 1, 2012, until January 1, 2014, recast these provisions and require that the initial statement of reasons also include a description of any performance standard that was considered as an alternative to the proposed adoption, amendment, or repeal of the regulation. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.