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The year 1983 was an active one for administrative law reform in Virginia. The Governor's Regulatory Reform Advisory Board completed its first full year of studying the state administrative process in Virginia, developing proposals for its improvement and drafting enabling legislation. The Board received a wide variety of suggestions from state employees, businesses, and the public at large in open hearings and through private correspondence. The result was the Board's first annual report, containing a series of proposed legislative reforms. The common thread of these reforms was an increased public involvement in bureaucratic decision-making creating broadly applicable regulations with the force of law. These reforms were enacted in 1984 by the General Assembly in amendments to the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA) and the Virginia Register Act (VRA).

This article covers changes made to the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA) during the 1992 session of the General Assembly. It also covers selected recent cases from Virginia courts dealing with state administrative procedure decided between August 30, 1990 and September 17, 1992.

The express purpose of the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA) is to supplement present and future basic laws that confer authority on agencies to make regulations and decide cases, and to standardize court review thereof except where laws later enacted may otherwise expressly provide. VAPA does not supersede or repeal additional procedural requirements set forth in the basic laws. Instead, its purpose is to supplement the procedural requirements of existing laws. The "basic law" includes provisions in the constitution and statutes of the Commonwealth of Virginia which authorize a state government agency to make regulations or decide cases, or which contain procedural requirements for such activities.

The year 1983 was an active one for administrative law reform in Virginia. The Governor's Regulatory Reform Advisory Board completed its first full year of studying the state administrative process in Virginia, developing proposals for its improvement and drafting enabling legislation. The Board received a wide variety of suggestions from state employees, businesses, and the public at large in open hearings and through private correspondence. The result was the Board's first annual report, containing a series of proposed legislative reforms. The common thread of these reforms was an increased public involvement in bureaucratic decision-making creating broadly applicable regulations with the force of law. These reforms were enacted in 1984 by the General Assembly in amendments to the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA) and the Virginia Register Act (VRA). The three most salient of these reforms were the establishment of a Virginia Register of Regulations as a widely accessible source for the output of agencies engaged in rulemaking, the creation of an affirmative obligation on the part of rulemaking agencies to seek out and incorporate public input before drafting a new regulation, and the creation of an apparatus for political branch involvement in agency rulemaking decisions to replace the constitutionally defective legislative veto. This article will examine the amendments to VAPA and VRA, extrapolate some limits to their scope and efficacy, and offer some conclusions concerning the significance of the new legislation for the Virginia administrative process.

After three years of working major changes to the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA), the General Assembly paid scant attention to the Commonwealth's fundamental law of administrative procedure in 1987. During its most recent session, the legislature produced only three amendments to VAPA, inserting a regulation severability provision, modifying VAPA's impact on Voluntary Formulary changes, and narrowing the exemption enjoyed by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. In two other statutory changes affecting administrative procedure, the General Assembly expressly provided for agency subdelegation and specified the method for computing time for a rule of court. While severability has evolved into an issue of some import in federal administrative law, its 1987 expression by statutory amendment is unlikely to create a controversy in Virginia administrative law. Three of the other legislative changes should give neither bench nor bar much pause. The subdelegation provision, however, does present a potential problem because of its apparent incompatibility with recent changes to the law of administrative adjudication. The problem is unlikely to be serious given the demonstrated good sense of Virginia's agency heads, but it ought to be remedied by prompt corrective legislation.

Both the General Assembly and the Supreme Court of Virginia have been active recently in administrative law. For the past three years, a broadly-based movement for bureaucratic reform has influenced the legislative and executive branches of state government. The instrument for formal expression of this reform has been the Governor's Regulatory Reform Advisory Board. In 1985, the General Assembly and the Governor responded obligingly to a second round of suggestions from the Board for amendment of the commonwealth's general administrative process act. These legislative changes involved the definition of regulation, i.e., the output of a statutorily controlled administrative rulemaking process, and the consolidation of exemptions to and exclusions from the general procedural scheme. Returning to an issue of interpretation first addressed in 1982, the supreme court twice considered the time bars, concocted from statute and court rule, which limit judicial review of agency action.

After three years of working major changes to the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA), the General Assembly paid scant attention to the Commonwealth's fundamental law of administrative procedure in 1987. During its most recent session, the legislature produced only three amendments to VAPA, inserting a regulation severability provision, modifying VAPA's impact on Voluntary Formulary changes, and narrowing the exemption enjoyed by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. In two other statutory changes affecting administrative procedure, the General Assembly expressly provided for agency subdelegation and specified the method for computing time for a rule of court. While severability has evolved into an issue of some import in federal administrative law, its 1987 expression by statutory amendment is unlikely to create a controversy in Virginia administrative law. Three of the other legislative changes should give neither bench nor bar much pause. The subdelegation provision, however, does present a potential problem because of its apparent incompatibility with recent changes to the law of administrative adjudication. The problem is unlikely to be serious given the demonstrated good sense of Virginia's agency head.

Virginia's courts interpret the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA) to prohibit judicial review of administrative decisions that grant or deny public assistance funds. Virginia is therefore one of only three states which fail to provide judicial review of such decisions. This article advocates judicial review of public assistance hearing decisions on the basis of principles of statutory construction and constitutional law. The article concludes that Virginia's minority status indicates a failure to meet traditional notions of fairness.

This article is a report of certain developments during the last two years relating to the Virginia Administrative Process Act ("the VAPA"), which governs rulemaking and adjudication of cases by state agencies as well as judicial review of both.

Both the General Assembly and the Supreme Court of Virginia have been active recently in administrative law. For the past three years, a broadly-based movement for bureaucratic reform has influenced the legislative and executive branches of state government. The instrument for formal expression of this reform has been the Governor's Regulatory Reform Advisory Board. In 1985, the General Assembly and the Governor responded obligingly to a second round of suggestions from the Board for amendment of the commonwealth's general administrative process act. These legislative changes involved the definition of regulation, i.e., the output of a statutorily controlled administrative rulemaking process, and the consolidation of exemptions to and exclusions from the general procedural scheme. Returning to an issue of interpretation first addressed in 1982, the supreme court twice considered the time bars, concocted from statute and court rule, which limit judicial review of agency action.

Since the last report, administrative law in Virginia has continued to develop on both the legislative and judicial fronts. This year's General Assembly enacted amendments to the state's administrative procedure statute which embody the third and final round of recommendations by the Governor's Regulatory Reform Advisory Board. The major changes were the standardization of procedures for obtaining judicial review of state agency action and the embodiment in statute of a corps of independent hearing officers. Note: This submission also includes a small preface from the Law Review Editorial Staff.