Only a day after passing a major bill to reduce future state regulations, lawmakers have approved two more measures that could also generate significant culling of government regulation in Oklahoma.

Senate Bill 995, by state Sen. Micheal Bergstrom and state Rep. Gerrid Kendrix, prohibits any new state agency regulations from taking effect unless they are expressly approved by both chambers of the Oklahoma Legislature.

The bill states, “Any rules not acted upon by the adoption of a joint resolution shall be deemed disapproved.”

That’s in sharp contrast to current law, which allows agency regulations to take effect unless expressly rejected by the Legislature.

Bergstrom said SB 995 will force state agencies to keep their regulations aligned with the specific powers provided to the agency in state law.

“Since the agencies will know, up front, that they’re going to have to come to us and prove to us why their rules are needed—because if they don’t, we can just not act upon them and they won’t go into effect—it will mean that we’re going to take and have the agencies be more active in interacting with us in the Legislature to make sure that what they want is able to be moved forward,” said Bergstrom, R-Adair. “And hopefully, we’re going to see the legislators being able to have a more active role.”

State Sen. Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, objected, saying the process would require government agency officials to spend more time interacting with lawmakers rather than focusing on other tasks.

“To me, that’s them having to lobby and advocate with us,” Kirt said. “And that’s state-employee time spent convincing us that their rules are worthwhile.”

Bergstrom noted that agencies already have employees whose main focus is drafting regulations and said those individuals are already expected to explain proposed regulations to lawmakers.

SB 995 passed the Oklahoma Senate on a 33-8 vote. The bill now proceeds to the governor.

Members of the Oklahoma Senate also approved Senate Bill 1024, by Bergstrom and Kendrix, which prohibits the adoption of a proposed state agency regulation unless it has been approved by either the governor or the appropriate governor’s cabinet secretary.

SB 1024 passed the Oklahoma Senate on a 34-8 vote. The bill now proceeds to the governor.

The two bills passed only one day after members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives sent a major regulatory reform to the governor.

House Bill 2728, by Kendrix and Bergstrom, would create the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act of 2025.

Under that bill, the existing Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT) will independently review and assess the economic impact of major rules proposed by state agencies, examining any rule expected to create implementation and compliance costs of more than $1 million over a five-year period.

The Legislature would then have the option to approve or disapprove the proposed agency rules, and major rules generating high compliance costs could not be tied to non-major rules in any joint resolution regarding their approval.

Since a similar law was enacted in Florida in 2010, that state has experienced a 51 percent decrease in the number of rules proposed through the administrative process.

Oklahoma policymakers have focused on regulatory reform this year after a recent report demonstrated that Oklahoma is among the most heavily regulated states in the nation, despite its reputation as a conservative bastion.

The 2024 edition of “Snapshots of State Regulations,” issued by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, showed Oklahoma has 142,313 regulations on the books. Overall, Oklahoma was the 17th-most regulated state in the country, according to the report.