Congratulations to the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research on winning the 2025 Robert J. Colborn Jr. Innovative Award!
The Administrative Codes and Registers (ACR) Section of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) awarded the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research the 2025 Robert J. Colborn, Jr. Innovation Award at the association’s annual conference for their work developing and creating the Code of Arkansas Rules (CAR).
For the first time in the history of the state, Arkansas has a centralized location in which the public can access the state’s administrative rules with the launch on January 1, 2025, of the Code of Arkansas Rules (CAR), https://codeofarrules.arkansas.gov/. Before the implementation of the CAR, full, current rules could be found only on agency websites if posted or on the Secretary of State’s website only if the agency’s rule filings contained the entire rule. Now, all of the complete rules are in one location, which greatly enhances transparency and availability to the public of effective administrative rules.
The CAR project began with an act of the Arkansas General Assembly that required the Bureau of Legislative Research (BLR), the service agency for the legislature, to “[c]ompile, format, and index a codification of the general and permanent rules of agencies”. With assistance from state agencies, BLR codified a body of about 2,800 rules into an administrative code. The work consisted of BLR identifying the body of rules to be codified, creating an overall organization of the code, developing a unique citation format, and codifying the rules in a nonsubstantive way to produce a uniform code with a common style and formatting scheme.
BLR empaneled a CAR Work Group to act as an advisory body during the project. The group included representatives from the Governor’s office, Attorney General’s office, Arkansas Bar Association, and various state agencies. This group vetted the CAR project’s plan of operation and assisted BLR in identifying the best and least disruptive practices for the project and working with the agencies.
BLR took each rule and revised them to conform with CAR style. These revisions included converting the numbering and formatting to match the new scheme; making name changes to entities, funds, officers, and other things to be consistent across all administrative rules; making grammatical and spelling corrections; correcting erroneous or outdated legal citations; and adding authority notes and general codification notes where appropriate.
The CAR website was developed in-house by BLR IT staff. It is searchable, which is required by state law, by keyword, authority, and rulemaking entity. The website currently updates weekly, but daily updates are in the near future. Though the CAR only contains general and permanent rules as required by state law, the website that houses CAR also contains a link to emergency rules that have been filed since the effective date of the CAR.
With the advent of the CAR, Arkansas has modernized its administrative rule infrastructure and taken a leap forward in the realm of administrative rulemaking. The opacity of the former structure has been replaced with transparency, and agencies are now relieved of the responsibility of being the custodians of their own rules. Now, there is a centralized, common location where the public can find current rules and Arkansans now have increased access to governmental requirements that may affect aspects of their lives.
2025 Robert J. Colborn, Jr. Innovation Award Committee Members:
Chair: Chris Coffman
Director
State of Oklahoma
Secretary of State
Email: chris.coffman@sos.ok.gov
Phone: (405) 521-4022
Member: Kylie Cone
Sr. Business Analyst
State of Utah
Department of Government
Operations
Email: kmcone@utah.gov
Phone: (801) 657-1056
Member: Jack Ewing
Administrative Code Editor and Senior Legal Counsel
State of Iowa
Iowa Legislature
Email: jack.ewing@legis.iowa.gov
Phone: (515) 281-6048