In 1995 the Legislature mandated the creation of a New Mexico Administrative Code to improve access to the rules filed by state agencies. The State Records Administrator, the director of the Commission of Public Records – State Records Center and Archives (CPR) was given responsibility for creating and maintaining the code. A Rules Advisory Committee was created to assist the State Records Administrator in constructing a numbering system and establishing standards of style to expedite compilation. Prior to 1995 there were no uniform style requirements governing the internal structure of a rule and no standard numerical hierarchy by which they could be indexed. The Rules Advisory Committee wrote rules that defined the numbering system and style requirements to be used by all rule-issuing agencies and then solicited comments in public hearings. Agencies began filing in the NMAC style and format on July 1, 1995.
Technological development and the need to structure data to facilitate compilation and ease of use led the CPR to review the NMAC standards and to propose changes to the style requirements and numerical structure. The CPR solicited comments in public hearings and through distribution to affected parties and in February of 2000 adopted new standards.
The new standards require a reformatting of the rules filed under the previous NMAC requirements. (The rules filed under the old NMAC requirements are commonly called NMAC 1 and those under the new requirements are NMAC 2.) The rules on this website reflect the standards adopted in 2000. To date 98% of all filed rules have been compiled and are available for free public access at this site.