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Sarah Huckabee Sanders was inaugurated on January 10th as Arkansas Governor.

Governor Sanders’ inauguration speech included a discussion of a new Executive Order titled:

Executive Order to Reduce Government Rules and Regulations (“EO”)

The EO contains a provision that states:

Unless granted an exemption by the Governor or exempted under a specific provision of Arkansas law, that all state departments, agencies, and offices shall submit to the Governor for her review and approval all proposed rules prior to appearing before a legislative committee of the General Assembly regarding rulemaking procedure.

Further, the EO requires in the absence of an exemption either by the Governor or under Arkansas law that all rules be resubmitted to the Governor for review and approval that were submitted prior to the execution of the EO and that have not received final approval by the General Assembly.

In addition, unless granted an exemption by the Governor or exempted under Arkansas law, for every one rule presented to a legislative committee of the General Assembly two rules must be simultaneously repealed.

The EO states the purpose of these requirements is:

. . . to assist in the success of businesses in this state rather than to impose additional burdens and barriers to industries.

Obviously, this EO is applicable to rules and rulemaking that have been (if not yet approved by a legislative committee) or will in the future be undertaken by Arkansas environmental agencies such as the Arkansas Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Commission and Arkansas Department of Energy & Environment – Division of Environmental Quality (“DEQ”). Of course, various DEQ rule revisions are driven by baseline delegated federal environmental programs.

A copy of the EO can be found here.