Article 4 of Chapter 3.5 of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the California Government Code sets forth the three administrative law publications in this state. Government Code Section 11344 requires the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) to:
- Provide for the official compilation, printing, and publication of adoption, amendment, or repeal of regulations, which is known as the California Code of Regulations. The OAL must make available on the Internet, free of charge, the full text of the California Code of Regulations, and may contract with another state agency or a private entity in order to provide this service.
- Make available on its Internet Web site a list of, and a link to the full text of, each regulation filed with the Secretary of State that is pending.
- Provide for the compilation, printing, and publication of weekly updates of the California Code of Regulations. This publication is known as the California Code of Regulations Supplement and must contain amendments to the code.
- Provide for the publication dates and manner and form in which regulations must be printed and distributed and ensure that regulations are available in printed form at the earliest practicable date after filing with the Secretary of State.
- Ensure that each regulation is printed together with a reference to the statutory authority pursuant to which it was enacted and the specific statute or other provision of law which the regulation is implementing, interpreting, or making specific.
Government Code Section 11344.1 requires the OAL to:
- Provide for the publication of the California Regulatory Notice Register, which is an official publication of the State of California and which must contain specified information, such as notices of proposed action prepared by regulatory agencies; a summary of all regulations filed with the Secretary of State in the previous week; summaries of all regulation decisions issued in the previous week detailing the reasons for disapproval of a regulation, the reasons for not filing an emergency regulation, and the reasons for repealing an emergency regulation; and certain determinations made by OAL.
- Establish the publication dates and manner and form in which the California Regulatory Notice Register must be prepared and published and ensure that it is published and distributed in a timely manner to the presiding officer and rules committee of each house of the Legislature and to all subscribers.
- Post on its website, on a weekly basis, the California Regulatory Notice Register, and one or more Internet links to assist the public to gain access to the text of regulations proposed by state agencies.
Government Code Section 11344.2 requires the OAL to supply a complete set of the California Code of Regulations, and of the California Code of Regulations Supplement, to the county clerk of any county. Section 11344.3 specifies that every document, other than a notice of proposed rulemaking action, required to be published in the California Regulatory Notice Register by this chapter, must be published in the first edition of the California Regulatory Notice Register following the date of the document.
Government Code Section 11344.4 requires the California Code of Regulations, the California Code of Regulations Supplement, and the California Regulatory Notice Register to be sold at prices which will reimburse the state for all costs incurred for printing, publication, and distribution. Section 11344.6 provides that the publication of a regulation in the California Code of Regulations or California Code of Regulations Supplement raises a rebuttable presumption that the text of the regulation as published is the text of the regulation adopted.
In addition, the courts are required to take judicial notice of the contents of each regulation which is printed or which is incorporated by appropriate reference into the California Code of Regulations as compiled by the office. The courts are also required to take judicial notice of the repeal of a regulation as published in the California Code of Regulations Supplement compiled by the office.
Government Code Section 11344.7 specifies that no person or state agency is precluded from purchasing copies of the California Code of Regulations, the California Code of Regulations Supplement, or the California Regulatory Notice Register, nor from printing special editions of any units and distributing them. However, where the purchase and printing is by a state agency, the state agency must do so at the cost or at less than the cost to the agency if it is authorized to do so by other provisions of law.