Administrative Rules in Wisconsin

Junjie Guo and Ananth Seshadri

Executive Summary:

• A series of Acts and Executive Orders under Governor Walker limit the ability of state
  
  agencies in Wisconsin to promulgate administrative rules, including
  • Act 21 and Executive Order #50 in 2011. In particular, Act 21 limits agencies
    
    to only passing standards or regulations that are explicitly permitted or required
    
    under state law
  • Acts 39 and 57 in 2017. Known as the REINS Act, Act 57 requires state legislative
    
    authorization of administrative rules that carry compliance and implementation
    
    costs of $10 million or more over a two-year period
• Using data from the Wisconsin Administrative Register, we find
  • a significant drop in the number of approved rules since 2011
  • no significant change around 2017 in either the number of proposed rules or the
    
    number of approved rules
• The insignificant change around 2017 could be a result of two opposite effects of the
  
  REINS Act that we will investigate in the future
  • A decrease in the number of administrative rules that cost $10 million or more
    
    over a two-year period
  • An increase in the number of administrative rules that cost less than $10 million
    
    over a two-year period, which could happen if state agencies split some high cost
    
    rules into multiple low-cost rules to avoid legislative authorization