What
are rules?
What
is the Arizona Administrative
Code?
What is the Arizona
Administrative Register?
When did the Secretary of State
start to print rules?
Are online
rules official rules?
What
is an effective date of a rule?
How do I
subscribe to a paper copy of the Arizona
Administrative Code or
Register?
Who do I contact
if I have a question about a rule?
Why does
an agency have an exemption to the rulemaking process?
How can the public
find out about changes to rules?
How can the public get
involved in the rulemaking process?
What is a Semi-annual
Index?
How can I find
copies of Governor Executive Orders?
How can I find copies of Governor
Proclamations?
What are rules?
A.R.S. 41-1001(17) states: “ ‘Rule' means an
agency statement of general applicability that implements, interprets,
or prescribes law or policy, or describes the procedures or practice
requirements of an agency.” Virtually everything in our daily lives
is affected in some way by rules published in the Arizona
Administrative Code, from the quality
of air we breathe to the licensing of your dentist.
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What
is the Arizona
Administrative Code?
The Arizona
Administrative Code is where the official
rules of the state of Arizona are published. The Code is
the official compilation of rules that govern state agencies, boards,
and commissions. The 10-volume set includes rules divided into 20 Titles
and 230 Chapters.
The Code contains all rules made by the regulatory
agencies of the state and filed with the Office after either certification
by the Attorney General or approval by the Governor's Regulatory Review
Council. The Code also contains rules
exempt from the rulemaking process or exempt from certification or
approval.
The office has a Code editor,
who makes revisions to Code Chapters as agencies change or
make new rules.
Code Supplements
The Secretary of State's Office publishes Code supplements
at least once each calendar quarter.
The
office publishes about 325 copies of each Code supplement,
for paid subscribers and government agencies.
Each supplement
contains between 1500-2000 pages of text, printed on both sides.
If you do the math, to print the Code supplements this year we will go
through 1,300,000 sheets of paper. That's 260 boxes of
paper -- over five tons of paper.
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What is the Arizona
Administrative Register?
The
Arizona Administrative Register (A.A.R.)
is the official publication to track rulemaking activity - from an idea
or concept of the making of a rule (docket opening) - to the proposal
of the rule (proposed rule) and public participation of the making of
the rule - to an agency making a final rule and getting it approved by
the Governor's Regulatory Review Council or the Attorney General's Office.
The
A.A.R. as published by our office is an official publication of the
state of Arizona and contains the rulemaking activity of the state's
agencies, including proposed, final, emergency, summary, and exempt
rules.
The
Secretary of State's Office prints the Register weekly.
Rulemakings initiated under the Administrative Procedure Act
as effective Jan. 1, 1995, include full text of rules.
In
addition, the Register contains the full text of
the Governor's Executive Orders and Proclamations of general
applicability, summaries of Attorney General opinions, notices
of rules terminated by the agency, and the Governor's appointments
of state officials and members of the state's boards and commissions.
Other documents may be included if the
documents are concerned with rulemaking or if state statute
requires that they be published in the Register.
The Office has a Register editor
who compiles the rulemaking activity every week into the publication.
We publish around 230 copies each week for paid subscribers and government
agencies. An average issue is about 100 pages. To print the weekly
Register we average over 560,000 sheets of paper a year.
The use of paper has significantly decreased over the years with
the posting of the Administrative
Code and Register online.
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When
did the Secretary of State start to print rules?
Laws 1972, Ch. 35, § 1
required all administrative rules in the state to be printed in one
official publication.
In 1975 the Secretary of State's Office
completed the codification of the rules and published the
first multi-volume set referred to as the Official Compilation
of Administrative Rules and Regulations.
In January 1987,
the name of the set was statutorily changed to its current
title, the Arizona Administrative
Code.
Until 1990 supplements were published
on 6” x 9” paper as “replacement
pages.”
Since then the Office has published supplements
by full Chapters on standard 8 1/2” x 11” paper, making Code set
updates faster and easier.
Starting in 1997 the Code was
posted online at the Secretary of State's Web site. Beginning
in 1999 we put the Register on
our Web site.
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How
can the public find out about changes in rules?
That's where the Arizona
Administrative Register comes in.
The Register is
an official state publication that contains the rulemaking
activity of the state's agencies, including proposed, final,
emergency, summary, and exempt rules.
The Office prints
the Register weekly.
The rulemaking process is lengthy and can be complicated,
but the Register is the medium for “tracking” a
rule as it makes its way through the process.
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Exemptions
to the Rulemaking Process
Please read the editor's notes appearing at the
beginning of each Administrative Code Chapter to learn if
any or all of the rules in that Chapter were adopted via
a rulemaking exemption.
Refer to the Administrative
Procedure Act (Arizona Revised Statutes, Title 41, Chapter 6, Articles
1 through 10) for more information about exemptions to the rulemaking
process.
Often an agency's exemption
is written in law from the Arizona State Legislature. Sometimes an
agency can be exempt from the entire rulemaking process.
Other times the Legislature will give an agency an exemption
from a specific part of the process, such as they do not
have to receive final approval from the Governor's Regulatory
Review Council, but still have to conduct public meetings
about the proposed exempt rules.
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How
can I find copies of Governor Executive Orders? How can
I find copies of Governor Proclamations?
The Register contains
the full text of the Governor's Executive Orders and Proclamations
of general applicability,
summaries of Attorney
General opinions, notices
of rules
terminated by the agency,
and the Governor's appointments
of state officials and
members of state boards
and commissions. Refer
to Semi-Annual Indexes
in the Register Table
of Contents. Copies of these filings can also be obtained by calling
602-542-4086.
Executive
Orders are also available
online
from the Law and Research
Library Division of Arizona
State Library, Archives
and Public Records. Visit State
of Arizona Executive
Orders.
This
is a numeric listing of the Executive Orders issued since April 22, 1965.
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What
is a Semi-Annual Index?
The
Secretary of State’s
Office is required to
publish a Semi-Annual
Index to the Register under
the Arizona Administrative
Procedure Act.
A.R.S. § 41-1013(A)
states, “The
secretary of state shall publish the register
at least once each month, including the information which is provided under
subsection B of this section and
which is filed with the secretary of state during the preceding thirty
days. The secretary of
state shall publish an
index to the register
at least twice each year.”
Included
in this Index are Governor's
appointments of state
officials and members of
boards and commissions;
Governor's Executive
Orders;
summaries of Attorney
General Opinions; and
Administrative
Code sections affected
in a six-month period.
They are published in
June and December of
each
year and can be found
in the Arizona
Administrative Register Table of Contents.
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Are
online rules official rules?
The
rules as posted on our
Web site do NOT appear
as they
are published by the Arizona
Secretary of State's office.
We
offer the rules online,
in HTML, PDF, and RTF
formats, but by law, the
official copy of the Arizona
Administrative Code is
still the paper copy published
by our office. In the
HTML format, illustrations,
graphics, and some tables
contained in rules may
not appear correctly because
they
did not electronically
convert symbols and fonts.
Please
be aware that symbols may
also change in the conversion
to HTML. Refer to the Disclaimer of
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What
is an effective date of a rule?
Generally
a
rule
becomes
effective sixty days after a certified original and two copies of
the
rule and preamble are filed in the Secretary of State's Office and
the time and date are affixed (A.R.S. § 41-1032).
The
agency
may
demonstrate that the rule needs to be effective immediately on
filing
with the Secretary of State's Office. This information would be
noted
in the agency's preamble as published in the Administrative Register.
Refer to the HISTORICAL NOTE in the Administrative
Code for an
effective
date of a rule.
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How
do I subscribe to the Administrative Code or Register?
Subscriptions
to
the
official
paper
version
of
the
rules
are
available.
Fill
out the Order Form and make checks or money
orders payable to the Secretary of State. ALL MATERIALS MUST BE PREPAID.
There is a fee for commercial use of the Administrative
Code and Register. Contact
the Office for more information.
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Who
do I contact if I have a question about a rule?
The
Secretary
of
State's
Office
files
state
agency
rule
and is
the
publisher of Arizona rules.
Please
contact
the
state
agency
if
you
have
a
question
about the filed rules. The contact information is found in the preamble
(beginning)
of the rule as published in the Administrative
Register.
If
you
have
questions
about
rules
when
reviewing
the Administrative
Code, contact the specific agency that made the rule.
 Agency
contact
information can be found online at the Arizona
State Web portal
If
you
have
questions
about the Arizona
Administrative Code or
Arizona Administrative
Register,
please contact the editors at (602) 542-4751; or
write:
Secretary
of
State
Public Services Division
1700
West
Washington,
7th
Floor
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Inquiries can also
be addressed to the editors via e-mail on our Contacts
page.
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How
can the public get involved in the rulemaking process?
The public is encouraged to participate in the rulemaking
process by which administrative rules are made, amended, or repealed.
Listed are some of the ways in which to participate
- By
inspecting a copy of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking filed with
the Secretary of State, Public Services Division, for publication
in the Arizona
Administrative Register
See A.R.S. § 41-1022
- By
making oral comments, if a public hearing is held, or written comments
to the agency proposing
the rule. In order for the agency to consider your comments, the agency must receive them before
the rulemaking is adopted. Your comments must reach the agency
within the 30-day comment period following Register publication
of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Send your comments to the
agency representative whose name and address are printed in the
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
See A.R.S. § 41-1022
- By
requesting, in writing to an agency, an
oral proceeding on a proposed rule within 30 days after the Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking has been published in the Register if
the agency has not scheduled a proceeding
See A.R.S. § 41-1023
- By
submitting to the Governor’s Regulatory
Review Council written comments that are relevant to the Council’s
power to review a given rule .
The Council reviews the rule at the end of the rulemaking process
and before the rules are filed with the Secretary of State.
See A.R.S. § 41-1052
Governor's
Regulatory Review Council
100 N.15th Ave., Ste. 402
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Phone: (602) 542-2058
Fax: (602) 542-1486
- By petitioning
an agency to adopt, amend, or repeal
a rule. The agency must respond to the petition.
See A.R.S. § 41-1033
References
are linked to the Arizona
Revised Statutes or A.R.S., a compilation of the
laws of the state of Arizona. Back
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