A consortium of farmers filed an appeal claiming that a letter that the Director of the Division of Codes and Standards in the Department of Community Affairs sent to the New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture constituted a “new agency rule” that DCA did not adopt per the rulemaking procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act. In the letter, the Director outlined the Uniform Commercial Code’s requirements for residential structures used to house farm workers, emphasizing the need to install an automatic sprinkler system. The letter was sent because the Director thought that many New Jersey farms that housed seasonal workers in former farming buildings were skirting the rules for residential dwellings. The Nw Jersey Appellate Division ruled that the Director’s letter merely conveyed information to the Secretary about the local construction officials’ responsibility to enforce the UCC’s existing change-of-use regulation and recommended actions the officials should require non-compliant farms to take to avoid future violations. The letter also lacked the fundamental earmarks of rulemaking, an administrative quasi-legislative exercise, and it bore few of the qualities that characterize a rulemaking activity subject to the procedural requirements of the APA. Because the letter was not a new agency rule, the Appellate Division dismissed the appeal.
