Senate Bill 995 by Adair Republican Sen. Michael Bergstrom would automatically reject any proposed administrative rules by state agencies if lawmakers don't act on them.
As it stands, inaction by the legislature or the governor means an automatic approval, regardless of what the new rules might be.
The issue has come up since the Oklahoma State Board of Education under State Superintendent Ryan Walters proposed a handful of new administrative rules in January, including but not limited to counting unauthorized immigrant students and their parents in public schools across the state.
The proposed rules spurred protests. And Gov. Kevin Stitt pushed back on the idea the next day.
At a press conference earlier this year, Stitt called the proposed rule requiring schools to count certain immigrant children "unbelievable."
"Collecting six, seven, and eight-year-old kids' addresses and immigration status in the state of Oklahoma, that's not a public safety issue," Stitt said. "Let's not terrorize and make our kids not show up at school. Collecting data on kids and using them as political pawns is not something that helps law enforcement."
The immigration rule is among the reasons why Stitt replaced three state school board members on short notice in early February, days after the original members unanimously approved the ruleset and pushed it on to the legislature.
The legislature is next to approve or reject the rules and hasn't acted on them for months. They have until the last day of the legislative session.
When it comes to legislation around reforming the process, leadership is split. Sen. Pro Temp Lonnie Paxton said he supports reviewing the order of operations related to administrative rule approvals and has allowed for the relevant lawmakers in his caucus to take control of that effort.
"I think there was a time when I was a lot more worried about the fact that some rules were going through without being reviewed," Paxton said. "My predecessor, Sen. [Greg] Treat, took that very seriously and had Sen. Bergstrom get involved in that."
House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson also said she supports the idea of simplifying how proposed state agency rules are reviewed and approved.
Munson's counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Julia Kirt, said she understands the worry around the state education rules specifically, but that maybe reforming the entire process isn't the best solution, considering there are hundreds of state agencies in the state — and most submit unalarming, "mundane" rules.
"Part of getting government done, frankly, is to allow them to become rules because these agencies are trying to do things like implement the laws, they're trying to update things to make them more fair or more efficient, and we should allow them to do that," Kirt said.
She said Ryan Walters is one elected official who is stepping out of line and not representative of the majority of state agency heads, most of whom are appointed by the sitting governor.
"To me, you don't change the whole law," Kirt said. "I feel like we're reacting to one circumstance and we may be taking it too far. How about we take action on the one thing we're worried about instead? We have that power."
House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, when asked about SB 995 at his weekly press conference, took the opportunity to plug House Bill 2728 by Rep., which he's hoping the Senate approves on the floor in the coming weeks.
Also known as the REINS Act, the measure would create a team of lawmakers within the pre-existing Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency, or LOFT, dedicated to reviewing agency rule sets that would have any fiscal impact on the state.
"I think the important thing that we could do is pass the Reins Act, which was one of the first pieces of legislation that we passed, which would provide more oversight on the administrative rules process when there's a fiscal impact on the bill," Hilbert said.
Otherwise, he said, the House and Senate are working together to finalize whatever changes may come from a tweaked administrative rule process.
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