Idaho administrative rules

A statute might say the Department of Environmental Quality "shall adopt rules" for wastewater permits. The legislature passes that sentence in an afternoon. The department then spends a year writing forty pages of rules that decide what a permit costs, how long it takes and what counts as a violation. Those rules carry the force of law. If you only watch bills, you miss most of the law that touches people's daily lives.

Where rules come from

An administrative rule is a regulation an agency writes because a statute told it to, or allowed it to. No statutory authority, no rule. Every Idaho rule notice must cite "the specific section of the Idaho Code that has occasioned the rulemaking" (Idaho Code 67-5221). The rules live in the Idaho Administrative Code, organized by IDAPA number, and the process for making them is set by the Idaho Administrative Procedure Act, Title 67, Chapter 52.

The Office of the Administrative Rules Coordinator, housed in the Division of Financial Management under the governor, runs the system. It publishes the monthly Idaho Administrative Bulletin, which carries every rulemaking notice, every proposed, pending and temporary rule, and the governor's executive orders. It also runs Townhall Idaho, a calendar of scheduled rulemaking meetings and hearings open to the public.

The stages of an Idaho rule

1. Notice of intent and negotiated rulemaking

Before changing a rule, the agency must decide whether negotiated rulemaking is feasible (Idaho Code 67-5220). If it is, the agency publishes a notice of intent in the bulletin and on its website, holds meetings with interested people and tries to reach consensus. The statute requires the agency to share the information it is considering, consider recommendations and write a summary of unresolved issues. If the agency skips negotiation, it must explain why in its proposed rule notice.

This is the cheapest moment to influence a rule. Nothing is on paper yet, and staff are actually asking.

2. Proposed rule and comment

The agency publishes a notice of proposed rulemaking in the bulletin. It must include the statutory authority, a nontechnical summary, any fee being imposed or raised, any general fund impact over $10,000, the rule text in legislative format, hearing dates and the comment deadline (67-5221). An abbreviated legal notice runs in newspapers around the state.

Idaho Code 67-5222 sets the floor for public input: at least 21 days of comment after publication. If 25 persons, a political subdivision or an agency ask in writing within the deadline, the agency must hold an oral presentation on a substantive rule. Agencies must allow oral presentation by video conference or phone. Beginning July 1, 2026, agencies must post a recording of any oral presentation and rule hearing within 15 days and keep it online for at least three years.

3. Pending rule

After comment closes, the agency must consider all the comments and can then adopt a pending rule, published with a statement of reasons and a list of changes from the proposal (67-5224). It cannot publish the pending rule until at least seven days after comment closes.

4. Legislative review

Idaho gives its legislature unusual power over rules. Under Idaho Code 67-5291, a germane standing committee reviews each rule for consistency with legislative intent. The legislature can approve or reject rules, in whole or in part, by concurrent resolution, which does not go to the governor.

The rules were tightened in 2023 and 2024. Today a pending rule, fee or non-fee, that is not approved by concurrent resolution expires at sine die. Silence kills it. Approved pending rules take effect July 1 of that year unless the resolution says otherwise. When the legislature rejects a rule, it must state why the rule is inconsistent with the statute, and the agency cannot come back with a substantially similar rule.

5. Temporary rules

A temporary rule skips ahead. Under 67-5226 it is allowed only when the governor finds that one of these requires earlier effect: an imminent threat to public health, safety or welfare; compliance with deadlines in amended law; reducing a regulatory burden; protection of citizens' rights; or a natural disaster. The agency can make it effective immediately. A temporary rule not approved by concurrent resolution expires at the end of the next regular session (67-5291(3)), and the agency must start a regular proposed rule alongside it.

	Pending rule	Temporary rule
Public comment first?	Yes, at least 21 days	Only such notice "as is practicable"
Who triggers it	The agency	The agency, after a governor's finding
In force before legislative review?	No	Yes, can be immediate
If the legislature does nothing	Expires at sine die	Expires at sine die of the next regular session, or earlier by its own terms

The eight-year review and the rule-cutting campaign

Idaho Code 67-5292 now requires every rule chapter in effect on July 1, 2026 to be reviewed by the legislature on a staggered schedule between July 1, 2026 and June 30, 2034, and every eight years after that. Before each review, the agency must report whether the rule is still necessary and whether it would be better placed in the Idaho Code itself. The coordinator posts the schedule on its website.

That law grew out of a campaign Gov. Brad Little started in 2019 with executive orders including the Red Tape Reduction Act (2019-02) and Zero-Based Regulation (2020-01), which set up routine annual reviews of rule chapters. The governor's office reports that rule chapters fell from 736 to 381 and code pages from more than 8,200 to 4,659, that 95 percent of regulations were cut or simplified since 2019, and that Idaho became the "least regulated state." The governor's page does not name the ranking's data source.

Here is how to weigh that fairly. Supporters, starting with the governor's office, argue that shorter, clearer rules cut compliance costs and force agencies to justify every requirement. Those are reasonable claims, and the page and chapter counts are real. But page counts and chapter counts measure volume, not substance. A rule can be consolidated into a shorter chapter without changing what it requires, and 67-5292 itself contemplates moving some rule content into statute, where it does not show up in the rule count at all. Rankings that count restrictive words such as "shall" and "must" share the same limit. The honest version: Idaho's administrative code is much shorter than it was in 2019, by the state's own count, and what that shortening changed for a given industry is a question you answer rule by rule.