Thinking Practically About How to Amplify Public Input in State Administrative Rulemaking

Public input can provide state agencies with critical information as they adopt health-shaping rules. However, generating meaningful public input is challenging. State administrative procedure acts set out how state agencies must make rules and establish notice and comment processes to seek input into rulemaking. Notice and comment, though, is not conducive to meaningful public input. To enhance public input into state rules, government entities should not limit their engagement to notice and comment and should deploy, and maybe even amend, rulemaking processes to facilitate public input. Meanwhile, advocates and community members should prioritize state rulemaking, in all its phases, as part of their advocacy efforts.