Welcome to Arkansas’s Administrative State: 

Summary: 

Lack of accountability is exactly why the administrative state has grown so dramatically. Reining in the regulatory balloon will require the Legislature to reclaim its proper constitutional role.  

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The typical Arkansan may not realize that he lives much of his daily life under the authority of roughly 329 state-level boards and commissions. These bodies issue detailed rules covering everything from education and medicine to cosmetology, plumbing, farming, and retail. 

While the state Legislature draws most of the public scrutiny, the majority of new rules that actually govern daily life come not from elected lawmakers but from these boards and commissions. 

When Arkansas published its first official comprehensive code in 1987, it contained approximately 25,000 pages of statutes. By 2025, the Arkansas Code Annotated had grown to roughly 50,000 pages — a doubling over 38 years. 

By contrast, the state’s administrative rules were only recently consolidated. In 2024, the Bureau of Legislative Research described the upcoming Code of Arkansas Rules as containing about 1,000 rules totaling roughly 40,000 pages. By December 2025, that number had jumped to 2,157 rules — effectively doubling in about one year. This suggests the administrative rulebook now exceeds 75,000–85,000 pages. 

This explosion of administrative rules dwarfs the output by the Legislature — the branch directly accountable to voters. 

The Code of Arkansas Rules micromanages everyday activities in ways such as: 

• Small producers may not sell unwashed eggs at farmers’ markets, despite the fact that unwashed eggs can safely remain at room temperature for weeks. 

• A child wanting to run a lemonade stand at a farmers’ market generally needs a Retail Food Establishment permit and must sell commercially prepared (store-bought) lemonade rather than homemade. 

• Licensed lay midwives may not attend twin deliveries and face significant restrictions when attending women who have had seven or more previous births. 

• Barber and cosmetology shops must maintain a minimum of 168 square feet of working space, plus an additional 50 square feet for each practitioner beyond the first. 

• A supervising plumber must remain within line of sight or 250 yards of an apprentice on many job sites. 

• Anyone keeping bees must register their apiary with the state, providing the legal description or GPS coordinates of the property within 10 days. 

By the time families are crossing state lines for a twin birth or arguing over “pasture rights” for backyard bees, the rules have become absurd. 

Past governors made attempts at streamlining (Dale Bumpers in 1971 and Asa Hutchinson in 2019), but these reorganizations focused mainly on structure and executive control rather than reducing the scope or volume of regulation. 

The fact is, every time the government makes a set of rules micromanaging how people can behave with respect to childbirth, or bees, or plumbing – the people lose the freedom to choose those things for themselves. And when such a decision is made by an appointed board, rather than an elected legislature, that loss of freedom also comes without representation.  

So, what should the Legislature do? 

Step One: Stop the routine practice of writing into each law, “the board shall promulgate rules as necessary to implement this chapter.” Instead, legislators should spell out specific standards, criteria, and limits in the statutes themselves. 

Step Two: Revive and aggressively use meaningful sunset provisions. The legislature allowed a broad sunset process to lapse in 1983. Reinstating automatic expiration of rules (or entire regulatory programs) unless reauthorized would force periodic review. 

Step Three: Implement a “regulatory retirement” requirement — for every new rule adopted, agencies must retire or simplify a certain number of existing rules. 

So, what should we, the people, do? 

Step One: Educate yourself on how Arkansas government works before you are forced to do so by being denied a specific freedom.  Look up the cites given in this article to get a small taste of what you are up against living in this so called “free state.” 

Step Two: Call your legislators and tell them to stop giving extensions for holding these Boards accountable and stop exempting Boards and Commissions from oversight in new legislation. 

Step Three: Elect state legislators who will take responsibility for the laws they pass (within the bill itself) rather than expecting it to be handled by Boards and Commissions. 

Convenience for legislators is part of the problem. It is far easier to create a board (usually responsible under another branch of government) and say “they’ll figure out the details” than to do the hard work of lawmaking.  But this lack of accountability is exactly why the administrative state has grown so dramatically. Reining in the regulatory balloon will require the Legislature to reclaim its proper constitutional role.  

And if it’s burdensome enough to create rules for which legislators can’t be bothered, then perhaps it is also too burdensome to ask the public to follow them. 

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Works Cited 

1.  “The typical Arkansan may not realize that he lives much of his daily life under the authority of roughly 329 state-level boards and commissions.”  https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Home/FTPDocument?path=%2FAssembly%2FMeeting+Attachments%2F000%2F26649%2FExhibit+G.01+-+JPR+-+Act+276+of+2021+-+Final+Report+JPR+2023.pdf 

2. “The Code of Arkansas Rules …  https://codeofarrules.arkansas.gov/Rules/Search

3. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Online database for Arkansas agency rules launches quietly after 5 years, $2.7 million.” December 7, 2025. (Bureau of Legislative Research quote on 2,157 rules). https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/dec/07/online-database-for-arkansas-agency-rules/ 

4. Arkansas, Bureau of Legislative Research / Joint Performance Review Committee. Joint Performance Review Committee Reporting Requirements for Boards and Commissions. February 24, 2021 (updated references through 2023). https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Home/FTPDocument?path=%2FAssembly%2FMeeting+Attachments%2F000%2F26649%2FExhibit+G.01+-+JPR+-+Act+276+of+2021+-+Final+Report+JPR+2023.pdf (Approx. 272 state boards/commissions + 57 Amendment 33 entities). 

5. “Creating the Code of Arkansas Rules.” Administrative Rules Project. PDF. http://www.administrativerules.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Code-of-Arkansas-Rules.pdf (approx. 1,000 rules / 40,000 pages baseline). 

6. Arkansas Code of 1987 Annotated documentation and law review articles on its creation (approx. 25,000 pages of core content). 

7. Current Arkansas Code Annotated (2025 edition estimates ~49,000–55,000 pages). 

8. Arkansas Department of Health. Rules Governing the Practice of Licensed Lay Midwifery. 

9. Arkansas Department of Agriculture. Apiary Registration requirements. 

10. Arkansas State Board of Cosmetology. Rules on establishment square footage requirements (minimum 168 sq ft + 50 sq ft per additional practitioner). 

11. Arkansas Plumbing Board. Rules on apprenticeship supervision (line-of-sight or 250-yard requirements). 

12. Arkansas Department of Health. Rules on food establishments and farmers’ markets (cottage food / Time/Temperature Control for Safety provisions, including unwashed eggs and lemonade stands). 

13. Arkansas Governor’s Office. Governor’s Boards and Commissions page (portal.arkansas.gov reference to approximately 350 boards and commissions, accessed June 2026). 

14. Historical analyses of Act 38 of 1971 (Bumpers reorganization) and Act 910 of 2019 (Hutchinson reorganization).