Georgia continues to grapple with a complex, outdated and steadily expanding regulatory environment. Debates over the state’s regulatory burden, including proposals such as the “Red Tape Rollback Act” introduced last year, are not occurring in isolation. They reflect a broader national movement in which states are reassessing long-standing regulatory structures that constrain economic growth and stifle innovation.
Since the publication of our initial 2025 overview of regulatory reform efforts, legislatures and governors across the country have advanced new reforms aimed at trimming individual rules and rebalancing power between unelected bureaucratic agencies and legislatures. The details vary by state, but common goals include greater legislative oversight for approval of high-cost regulations, clearer economic accountability and an unwinding of regulations that have accumulated over the years.
One major trend has been the imposition of systematic reviews of existing regulations. Alaska offers one of the most ambitious examples. Through a pair of executive orders issued in 2025, the state launched a comprehensive government efficiency and regulatory reform initiative. Agencies are now required to inventory and streamline their regulations, guidance documents and incorporated materials, with targets of reducing regulatory requirements by 15% by the end of 2026 and 25% by the end of 2027. The reforms also emphasize transparency and predictability, including mandatory posting of guidance documents, standardized permitting timelines and automatic approval when agencies miss statutory deadlines.
Indiana followed a similar path, directing agencies to cut regulatory requirements by 25% by 2029 and to justify the continuation of rules that have gone untouched for eight years or more. Both states sought to institutionalize continuous review instead of one-time deregulation.
At the state legislative level, REINS-style frameworks (named after the proposed federal legislation, Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act) have become the dominant vehicle for reform. These laws require legislative approval of regulations with significant economic impacts before they can take effect, restoring a measure of democratic accountability to the rulemaking process.
Kentucky enacted such a framework in 2025 over a gubernatorial veto, requiring lawmakers to approve regulations projected to cost $500,000 or more over two years. Louisiana enacted a bipartisan overhaul of its Administrative Procedure Act, creating fiscal thresholds that trigger legislative oversight while allowing the governor to approve if committees do not review a rule within 30 days.
North Carolina’s reforms expanded the state’s definition of “substantial economic impact” and imposed supermajority voting requirements on costly rules unless they are federally mandated. Similarly, Utah’s approach ties statutory authorization directly to implementation and compliance costs of $2 million over a five-year period. Even states where REINS proposals were modified from their original intent during the legislative process, such as Wyoming, moved toward greater legislative control by authorizing lawmakers to block or suspend major rules after adoption.
Virginia’s experience offers perhaps the clearest evidence of what this style of reform can achieve. Under the Office of Regulatory Management, created by executive order in 2022, the state reports a reduction of nearly 27% in regulatory requirements, saving Virginia citizens an estimated $1.2 billion a year. Concrete outcomes, such as tens of thousands of dollars shaved off the cost of building a new home, have helped translate abstract regulatory debates into tangible benefits for families.
Several states paired legislative oversight with enhanced economic analysis. In addition to requiring legislative approval of major rules, Oklahoma’s REINS Act of 2025 also created an independent Legislative Economic Analysis Unit to evaluate agency cost estimates. The state simultaneously eliminated Chevron-style judicial deference to executive agencies’ interpretations of statutes by state courts and strengthened executive oversight of rulemaking.
Pennsylvania lawmakers pursued a complementary strategy, advancing legislation that combines REINS-style approval for economically significant regulations with automatic periodic review, ensuring that costly rules do not persist indefinitely without reevaluation.
Texas charted a slightly different course by establishing a permanent Regulatory Efficiency Office, modeled explicitly on the federal Department of Government Efficiency concept. Rather than focusing solely on approval thresholds, Texas tasked the new office with identifying duplicative and obsolete rules, improving economic analysis and providing agencies with plain-language tools to reduce regulatory burdens. Importantly, the law also curtails judicial deference to agency interpretations, reinforcing the judiciary’s independent role in regulatory disputes.
Taken together, these developments illustrate a national shift away from passive acceptance of regulatory growth and toward active reduction of the administrative state. No longer content to focus on individual rules at the margins, states are redesigning the processes that produce regulation in the first place.
For Georgia, the lesson is not that any single model must be copied wholesale, but that meaningful reform requires sustained oversight and a willingness to revisit long-standing assumptions about how regulation should function. As lawmakers consider the state’s next steps, they do so within a national context that increasingly favors accountability, transparency and restraint.