Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines

 Changes to the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines are not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but they are subject to procedural rules that the Commission must adopt—and those procedural rules are subject to the APA’s rulemaking requirements.

 

The APA requires state agencies to maintain a current, public rulemaking docket. The docket must contain a list of pending rulemaking proceedings or possible proposed rules under consideration by the agency. These proceedings include proposing new rules, amending existing rules, or repealing obsolete rules. The docket below is an overview of current APA rulemaking proceedings within the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission.

 

Subject: The Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission is considering amending the rules governing the promulgation of modifications to the Sentencing Guidelines, Minnesota Rules chapter 3000. Notably, the Commission is considering modernizing the rules by, for example, eliminating the requirement of contact by U.S. mail, and streamlining the public notice-and-comment requirements for a modification that relates to a crime created or amended by the Legislature in a preceding session, or a modification that the Legislature mandated or authorized. For Commission-initiated modifications to Sentencing Guidelines policy, however, no such streamlining of the public notice-and-comment process is being considered.