Good morning/afternoon. I am Meyer Goldstein, DEQ’s Agency Rules Coordinator. I will be talking today about two subjects; a proposed rulemaking for the commission’s consideration and a brief overview of DEQ’s rulemaking process.
The rulemaking proposal is titled the “Rule Tables Attachments.†This rulemaking’s purpose is only to make DEQ’s administrative rules easier for everyone to read, understand, and use.
This proposed rulemaking does not make any substantive changes to DEQ rules. It does not require any affected party to do anything differently than what they currently do to comply with DEQ’s rules.
This rulemaking only affects attachments to DEQ rules. Many DEQ rules refer to external documents, such as tables, maps, and reference manuals. These rule attachments are legally already part of the rules as they were adopted with the rules. However, many of those reference documents are not published with the rules.
All administrative rules were originally published in hard copy. In that form, there was no practical way to include rule attachments with these publications.
The official rules are now published electronically online by the Oregon Secretary of State. That office now has the capability to also publish PDF versions of rule attachments with the online rules. This rulemaking will take advantage of that capability to update rule attachments.
This proposed rulemaking does only a few simple things. It:
• Adds missing reference documents
• Improves the formatting of existing reference documents to make them easier to use
• Removes or replaces obsolete reference documents
DEQ recommends that the Environmental Quality Commission adopt the proposed rules, attached to the staff report as Attachment A, and their attachments, as part of Chapter 340 of the Oregon Administrative Rules.
I would be happy to answer any questions.