The Arizona Administrative Register (A.A.R.) is a record of the rulemaking activities of Arizona agencies. The Register contains proposed and final regulations as well as notices, executive orders, and other information.
There are two main purposes of the Register.
1. To inform the public about newly proposed regulations and amendments to existing regulations
2. To inform the public about final enacted regulations and amendments to existing regulations
rganization of the Arizona Administrative Register
The A.A.R. is published weekly in individual issues which are published in one volume for each year. A single yearly volume has consecutive pagination for the whole year.
Citation Format
A citation to the A.A.R. has a volume and page number.
Example - 26 A.A.R. 371
26 = volume number
371 = page number
Purpose of Publication
The Arizona Administrative Procedures Act requires that notice of all proposed and final regulations be published in the A.A.R.
Different Sources for the Arizona Administrative Register
The full text of the A.A.R. is only available on the Secretary of State's website. Westlaw and Lexis Advance have regulation tracking sources that contain final and proposed rules, but not the whole A.A.R.
As noted above, an agency must publish the full text of final regulations or amendments to regulations in the Arizona Administrative Register. On Westlaw, the historical information for a regulation is listed under Credits.
Looking at the History of a Regulations Example
You can see from the Credits information that the Arizona Board of Optometry has amended A.A.C. R4-21-306 several times. The most recent amendment went into effect on March 28, 2016, and was published in the Arizona Administrative Register at 22 A.A.R. 328.
Finding a Arizona Administrative Register Citation Example
Go to the Arizona Adminsitrative Register site, and click on Volume 22, and then find page 328.
Once you locate 22 A.A.R. 328 in the Arizona Administrative Register, you will notice it is a large PDF file. You can use your browser's Find feature to search within the PDF to find the amendment to A.A.C. R4-21-306.
What is a Preamble?
A preamble is background information for a proposed or final regulation that is required by a state's Administrative Procedures Act. Notice of a proposed or final rule in the Arizona Administrative Register is required to contain the full text of the new regulation/amendment to an existing regulation and a preamble with the following information:
Example
The preamble for the amendment to A.A.C. R4-21-306 (about optometrists and contact lenses prescriptions) is published in the Arizona Administrative Register at 22 A.A.R. 328 (scroll down to page 328 in the PDF).
| Click here to watch a video about preambles to amendments. |
