Bill giving Legislature greater say in regulatory process reintroduced

Harrisburg – In a cosponsorship memo last week, Senate Majority Whip John Gordner (R-Columbia) announced his intention to reintroduce legislation vetoed by Gov. Tom Wolf last session that would give the General Assembly a greater role in regulatory oversight.

Born out of his experience in the House, Sen. Gordner said last session that the vetoed legislation came to mind since Senate oversight committees tend to exercise less regulatory control than their House counterparts.

While he said the legislation will not drastically change the process, it will give the General Assembly greater say.

“This legislation will require that within five days of receipt of proposed regulations, the chair of the committee must provide a paper or electronic copy of the proposed regulations to each committee member for their review,” the memo reads. “The chair will also be empowered to hold hearings on the proposed regulations or to call a meeting to seek to have the committee, by a majority vote of the members, adopt official comments of the committee. Each member of the committee will still have the ability to individually submit comments to the chair, IRRC and/or the agency.”

Additionally, the Legislature will be given more time to review the regulations and give committees the ability to have the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) remove from its agenda final form regulations which the committee either disapproves or requests additional time for review.

Currently, each standing committee of the General Assembly has oversight of regulations from certain departments as designated by the President Pro Tempore or Speaker of the House; however, the only way the Legislature can actually stop a regulation from taking effect is through the passage of a concurrent resolution or other direct legislation.

While legislatively created, IRRC has the ability to say whether a regulation is in the public interest and somewhat delay the regulatory process; it has no actual ability to stop a regulation from being promulgated.

The legislation last session, Senate Bill 562, passed both chambers largely along party lines. The governor vetoed the legislation in October arguing the legislation is an overreach into executive authority and could grind the regulatory process to a halt.

“In promulgating regulations, executive agencies are simply exercising legal authority already granted to them by the Legislature,” he said in his veto message.

“Existing law already supplies the Legislature with significant influence in the regulatory process. The General Assembly has acted in many instances pursuant to this process to object to and significantly change regulations that members have felt exceeded the authority of the executive branch.”

Sen. Gordner has said he plans on modifying the vetoed legislation to address some of the governor’s concerns, namely the regulatory review process for when the Legislature is not in session for extended periods of time, which could slow down the current regulatory process.

Jason Gottesman is the Harrisburg bureau chief for The PLS Reporter, a non-partisan, online news site devoted to covering Pennsylvania government.