LEGISLATIVE FISCAL ESTIMATE TO

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE FOR

ASSEMBLY, Nos. 1612, 1025 and 646

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

DATED: JULY 9, 1996

      The Assembly Committee Substitute for Assembly Bill Nos.1612, 1025 and 646 of 1996 revises the administrative rule making process and amends, supplements and repeals various sections of the “Administrative Procedure Act,” (P.L.1968, c.410). The substitute requires, in addition to other rule-making requirements that: if not currently done, each State agency publish with its rules of practice, a table of all permits and fees, violations and penalties, deadlines, processing times and appeals procedures; each State agency publish in the New Jersey Register a quarterly, instead of monthly, calender with its anticipated rule-making activities for the next six months; that each agency publicize the availability of its calender and that the Office of Administrative Law set a reasonable fee for the purchase thereof; each State agency inform the news media covering the State House Complex, and electronically through the largest nonproprietary cooperative public computer network or the Internet, of the notice of the intended adoption, amendment, or repeal of any rule; each State agency provide an additional 30 day comment period if there is sufficient public interest and hold a public hearing if sufficient public interest is shown; and each agency respond within 60 days to a petition by any interested person to adopt a new rule, or amend or repeal an existing rule. If the agency fails to respond within the time frame provided the petitioner can request the OAL to order a public hearing on the rule making petition. If the State agency does not give notice that it will hold a public hearing then the Director of the OAL

is to hold the hearing which requires a verbatim record, changed from a transcript available to the public at cost. The bill also requires each agency to provide a regulatory impact analysis on proposed rules. Finally, the bill repeals the statutory reference to the Legislature’s veto of an administrative rule decreed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1982, and also repeals the provision of the Administrative Procedure Act that provided for the establishment of a Joint Legislative Oversight Committee.

      An informal estimate provided by the Office of Administrative Law (OAL), which is in, but not of, the Department of State, provides fiscal information for the OAL only. However, due to the additional rulemaking and reporting provisions specified in the bill, this bill has potential cost implications for every agency in State government. The OAL estimates that the first year following enactment of this bill, it will incur additional costs of $142,884. Costs for the second and third years are estimated at $134,054 and $140,376 respectively. These costs are based on salaries for three new hires including fringe benefits, materials and supplies, data processing and equipment costs. The total cost to the OAL is estimated to decrease in the second and third years due to the elimination of one-time equipment costs.

      The Office of Legislative Services notes that although State agencies are likely to incur additional costs as a result of the passage of this legislation, the potential exists for State agencies to recover some costs, although undetermined, through the sale of its calenders and records of each hearing made available to the public either at a reasonable fee or at cost. In addition, if any of the public hearings held by the OAL are conducted by an administrative law judge the revenues realized through agency assessments could offset some of the estimated cost of this bill.

      This legislative fiscal estimate has been produced by the Office of Legislative Services due to the failure of the Executive Branch to respond to our request for a fiscal note.

This fiscal estimate has been prepared pursuant to P.L.1980, c.67.