Oklahoma board ignores state law, impacts your home's value | Opinion
Unless you have an anxiety disorder, you probably haven’t lost sleep over whether your state is violating its own administrative procedure laws. In Oklahoma, a little-known state regulatory board is openly flouting both its enabling statute and the state’s Administrative Procedures Act. It’s doing so in plain sight, apparently betting no one is paying attention. So far, the bet has paid off. Buried deep in state law is a rarely used provision: agencies may adopt privately owned industry standards into law without publishing the full text, so long as those standards are nationally recognized. Once incorporated, they carry the force of law. The catch? Those standards are often copyrighted and locked behind paywalls. That power comes with mandatory safeguards. Without them, industry insiders, opportunists, and bad actors could effectively write Oklahoma law from behind closed doors, with little transparency and no real accountability to the public. The safeguards aren’t dramatic, but they align with the state’s Constitution. One safeguard: regulations that incorporate outside standards must cite the statute that authorizes their use. The rule must also identify the incorporated code by “proper title, edition, volume number and date.” Insomniacs can read that part of the procedural statute here . A
