Explanation of Proposed Rules Table

All proposed rulemakings must be approved by the Commissioners at an open meeting (conference) of the Railroad Commission and be published in the Texas Register for a public comment period. The first two columns of the Proposed Rules table indicate the rule number, the rule title, and the contact person's name and phone number. The contact person is who you should call if you have questions about the rule language.

When the Commission has approved publication of a proposal in the Texas Register, the conference date will be added to the "Proposal Approved at Conference for Submission to the Texas Register" column.

Because of Texas Register publication deadlines, proposed rules typically will not be published in the Texas Register for about two weeks after conference. In order to offer proposed rules for review in the period between conference and publication, the Commission makes the rule text available in .pdf format. The .pdf version may be accessed by clicking on the blue conference date in the "Proposal Approved at Conference" column. [Note: The .pdf version is provided for informational purposes only and is not considered the official version of any rule. The official version is the version that appears in the Texas Register or in the Texas Administrative Code.]

Once the proposal has been published in the Texas Register (published each Friday), a new link to the published text will be added to the "Proposal Published in the Texas Register" column.

Proposed rules may have different comment periods, so the "Comment Period Ends" column will specify the exact ending date. If you wish to submit comments on a proposed rule, the Commission must receive your comments by the date and time specified on the comment deadline.  Pursuant to the Commission policy adopted July 9, 2013, the Commission must enforce deadlines for submitting comments.

The Commission may receive your written comments in three ways: United States mail, electronic mail, or online. In the "Comment Period Ends" column, a link will be available to a "Comment Online" form. Once the comment period has ended, the link to the "Comment Online" form will be removed, but the comment period deadline date will remain.  The proposal preamble for each rulemaking will indicate the email address and the regular mailing address to use to submit comments, if you prefer one of those methods.

The next step is for the Commission to adopt a rule which also takes place at conference. Once a rule has been approved and adopted by the Commission at conference, the conference date of that action will be added to the "Adoption Approved at Conference" column. As with the "Proposal Approved at Conference" column, there will be a link from the conference date to the .pdf version of the adopted rule.

Once an adopted rule is published in the Texas Register, the Texas Register issue date will be added to the "Adoption Published in the Texas Register" column.

After an adopted rule is filed with the Texas Register, it becomes effective 20 days later (or on a specific date in the future). The effective date will be added to the "Effective Date of Adoption" column.

Seven days after the effective date, an adopted rule will be added to and available in the Texas Administrative Code, which is accessible from the Current Rules page on the Commission's website. After the effective date of the amendments, new rules or repeals, the rule item will be removed from the Proposed Rules page.