Representative Spiegelman presented House Bill 5, a proposal to amend Title 29 of the Delaware Code to create a legislative review process for executive branch regulations and to require agencies to submit regulations for periodic review.

Spiegelman told the House Administration Committee the bill is modeled on review systems used in other states and on Delaware’s sunset committee process and said the bill’s intent is to give the General Assembly a mechanism to review regulations that have the force of law. “This bill empowers this committee to look at things in the Department of Finance that would be federally illegal for the Department of Finance to give to this committee,” he said, noting those and other agency concerns are legitimate and that he intended to work with agencies to revise the proposal. He also said he intended to table the bill to allow more work on language.

Members raised questions about politicization of rulemaking and about workload. Representative Lesinski said regulation drafting is often a technical, nonpolitical task carried out by agencies and cautioned that review could reintroduce politics to technical rules. Spiegelman responded that the review process would allow the legislature to call agencies back when regulations diverge from legislative intent and that an oversight mechanism incentivizes agencies to correct problems earlier.

Jeff Hagen, former state registrar of regulations, testified on the scope and workload. He estimated there are roughly 20,000 regulations in Delaware overall but said many are technical or federally mandated and would be exempt from review; he estimated a committee would typically examine “25 to 30” packages in a month and argued the workload could be managed and that legislative oversight is appropriate. A DHSS representative thanked the sponsor for tabling the bill and said the department has “over a hundred sets of regulations” covering Medicaid eligibility, social services and behavioral health and warned that automatic expirations after 12 months would create instability for individuals served by the department.

Committee members discussed alternatives, including aligning reviews with agencies’ existing five‑year review cycles and focusing on a subset of potentially problematic regulations rather than renewing every regulation annually. Spiegelman said he would work with agencies to address HIPAA and other federal privacy concerns and to refine a schedule that would avoid annual expiration of all regulations.

Later in the hearing members moved to table the bill for further work. The transcript records a motion “to the table” by Representative Speedgoin, seconded by others; recorded votes included Chair Harris — yes; Vice Chair Zelensky — yes; Speaker Minor Brown — yes; Representative Zelensky — absent; Representative Steven Lee — yes. The committee announced the motion carried and the bill was tabled for revision and further stakeholder consultation.