Washington State Administrative Law

The Washington State Register contains the proposed, emergency, and permanently adopted rules of state agencies, as well as governor’s executive orders, maximum allowable interest rates, and notices of public meetings. It updates existing regulations in the Washington Administrative Code and is the only source for new regulations until the next edition or supplement of the WAC is published.

The Register is published every two weeks. The Semi-Annual Rules Agenda, published at the end of January and July contains agency plans for current and future rule-making. The Office of the Code Reviser website has indexes covering issues from 1997 to date.

Bluebook abbreviation: Wash. Reg.

Reporter of Decisions Style Sheet abbreviation: Wash. St. Reg.

Issues of the Register contain the following sections:

• Preproposal: statements of inquiry to solicit public comments on a general area of proposed rule-making
• Proposed: text of formal proposed rules and regulations
• Expedited rule-making: text of proposed rules and regulations
• Permanent: text of adoption rules and regulations
• Emergency: text of emergency rules and rescissions
• Miscellaneous
• Table: cumulative table of Washington Administrative Code sections affected during the current year
• Index: cumulative index, primarily by agency

Each document in the Register is given a unique number. Example: WSR 96-05-01. The first two digits indicate the year, the second set of digits indicate the issue number, and the last set of numbers indicate the order in which the document was filed with the Office of the Code Reviser. Caution: the document numbering system can be confusing. Documents are in numerical order within each of the sections itemized above but not within the issue as a whole.