SB 688 would add a new chapter to the Government Code establishing an Office of Regulatory Counsel inside the Governor’s office. The office would provide drafting and technical assistance on proposed regulations before those proposals are submitted to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for publication.
The bill frames the change as a quality-control measure aimed at reducing OAL disapprovals for clarity and consistency and includes a built‑in sunset: the new chapter repeals on January 1, 2035. It also asserts that staffing and operating costs will be absorbed from existing state resources.
At a Glance
What It Does
Creates a centrally controlled legal drafting unit within the Governor’s office that prepares, amends, and helps repeal regulations on behalf of state agencies prior to OAL review. The director runs the unit and serves a term aligned with the Governor.
Who It Affects
Executive-branch regulatory units and their legal teams, the Governor’s legal staff, the Office of Administrative Law (as the downstream reviewer), and agency rule‑drafters who would now interact with a centralized counsel unit.
Why It Matters
It shifts a key technical step in California rulemaking out of individual agencies and into a Governor‑controlled office, potentially changing turnaround, quality control, institutional responsibility for drafts, and the politics of regulatory text.
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What This Bill Actually Does
SB 688 creates a centralized drafting resource for state rulemaking that sits inside the Governor’s office and operates under a director. The bill gives the office authority to draft new regulations, assist agencies in preparing proposed regulations, and help with amendments and repeals.
That assistance is explicitly required to occur before agencies submit proposed actions to the Office of Administrative Law for publication in the California Regulatory Notice Register.
The statute defines basic terms (tying "regulation" to the statutory definition used elsewhere in the Government Code) and sets out appointment mechanics for the director: the Governor appoints the director and the office is part of the executive branch under gubernatorial control. The director’s tenure is made coterminous with the appointing Governor, subject to reappointment and Senate confirmation.SB 688 is temporary: the chapter it adds is scheduled to sunset on January 1, 2035.
The bill also contains legislative findings that emphasize two themes: that centralized drafting can reduce the most common reasons OAL disapproves regulations (primarily clarity and consistency problems), and that the office’s personnel and related costs will be absorbed within existing state resources so the law creates no new appropriation.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill requires the office to provide drafting and technical assistance on regulations before an agency submits a proposed action to the Office of Administrative Law.
The Governor appoints the director; the appointment must be confirmed by the Senate and the director’s term is coterminous with the appointing Governor.
SB 688 places the Office of Regulatory Counsel within the Governor’s office rather than creating an independent agency or placing it under an existing department.
The statute explicitly sunsets: the chapter is repealed effective January 1, 2035.
Legislative findings state the office’s costs will be absorbed from existing state resources and assert the office will address OAL disapprovals driven by clarity and consistency issues.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Definitions and scope
This section provides two short definitions: it names the new entity ("Office of Regulatory Counsel") and adopts the existing statutory definition of "regulation." That choice ties the office’s remit to the same universe of rulemaking that the Administrative Procedure Act references, avoiding an expansive new definition that could invite broader activities.
Establishment, placement, and leadership
This provision locates the office within the Governor’s office and makes it subject to gubernatorial direction and control. It sets out appointment mechanics: the Governor appoints a director who must be confirmed by the Senate, and the director’s term runs coterminous with the appointing Governor (but the director may be reappointed). Practically, that means leadership changes will track election cycles and may reflect the Governor’s regulatory priorities.
Core duties: drafting and pre‑OAL assistance
The statute requires the office to draft and assist with the preparation, amendment, and repeal of regulations for state agencies before agencies submit proposed actions to the OAL for publication. That timing point—pre‑submission to OAL—is the operational trigger: the office’s role is upstream of OAL review rather than replacing OAL’s statutory gatekeeping function.
Sunset clause
This single sentence repeals the chapter on January 1, 2035. The fixed sunset makes the office a time‑limited experiment and creates an endpoint for evaluation, but it also requires agencies and the Governor’s office to plan for either institutionalizing the function later or winding it down.
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Who Benefits
- State agencies' small legal shops — they gain access to specialized drafting attorneys and technical support that could reduce rework and OAL disapprovals, lowering legal risk and accelerating rule publication.
- The Governor’s office — centralizing drafting increases executive-level control over regulatory text and allows the administration to shape technical aspects of rule language consistently across agencies.
- Regulated entities and compliance counsels — clearer, more consistent regulations coming out of centralized drafting could reduce compliance uncertainty and litigation risk tied to ambiguous regulatory language.
Who Bears the Cost
- Agency rulewriters and counsel — they must integrate with a new central process, potentially ceding drafting control and adjusting internal workflows to obtain the office’s assistance before OAL filing.
- Governor’s legal staff and the new office — while the bill claims existing resources will cover costs, the office will still require staff time and operational capacity that the Governor’s office must furnish, potentially diverting resources from other priorities.
- The Legislature and oversight bodies — if the office centralizes technical drafting, legislative staff and committees may need to develop new practices to review executive‑branch technical choices and to assess the office’s influence on regulatory outcomes.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is reconciling improved technical quality and consistency through centralized drafting with the risk that moving drafting power into the Governor’s office erodes agency autonomy and politicizes the precise language of regulations; the statute seeks quality control but does not fully safeguard the procedural or institutional checks that preserve neutral, subject‑matter–driven rule text.
The bill raises implementation questions that the statute does not resolve. First, the text requires the office to assist agencies pre‑OAL but does not define the process for how agencies request assistance, whether assistance is mandatory or optional, or how conflicts between an agency’s legal staff and the Office of Regulatory Counsel will be resolved.
Second, the statute places the office inside the Governor’s office and makes the director coterminous with the Governor, which links technical drafting to political leadership but leaves open how internal firewalls—if any—will operate to preserve neutral, subject‑matter expertise. Third, the fiscal claim that the office will be absorbed within existing resources is declarative but unfunded: the statute does not specify which existing positions or budgets will shift, nor does it create reporting requirements or performance metrics to evaluate whether the consolidation reduces OAL disapprovals or expedites rulemaking.
Finally, the sunset date introduces a management challenge. A time‑limited office can be useful for pilots, but a ten‑year horizon (repeal in 2035) is long enough to change institutional behaviors and short enough to create uncertainty about long‑term staffing, training investments, and retention.
The statute contains no mandatory evaluation or sunset review, which weakens legislative oversight and makes it harder to determine whether the office should be continued, reconfigured, or allowed to expire.
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