The Legislative Services Agency has provided the General Assembly’s Code Revision Commission with a proposed outline for Recodification of Title 21 (PDF).
Title 20 of the Indiana Code concerning education was recodified during the last session of the General Assembly. In upcoming sessions, the legislature will likely tackle Title 21 which is education finance.
The Memo attached to the outline describes the proposed recodification as follows:
In the first year Grade K-12 education finance law would be moved primarily from Title 21 to Title 20. In the second year, the higher education law in IC 20-12 would be recodified in Title 21 with the remainder of higher education law.
. . .
The proposal changes the changes the sequence in which ideas are arranged. Current law is arranged in a local funding/state funding/local funding/ state funding/local funding/pensions sequence. The proposal would present the law in the following sequence: accounting systems/state tuition support formula/property taxes/borrowing. Pension law would be consolidated in Title 5. Provisions in Title 20 governing categorical grants outside the formula, start-up funding for charter schools, transfer tuition, student aid for textbooks, and permissible school fees would not be moved. Following the lead taken in HEA 1288, non-education levies for community use of facilities are moved to Title 36.
For those who may not be aware of the project, recodification has been an effort by the General Assembly to organize and simplify the Indiana Code, getting rid of superfluous language and putting the content in an intuitive format. This is a tough, tedious, and mostly thankless job. Great care has to be taken to restate the law without changing its substance. The bills that implement the recodification are large and unpleasant to wade through. It is critical that the legislators involved never feel like a substantive change is included either intentionally or by mistake — unless, of course, that change is very clearly announced.
Take a look at Title 3 (Elections) or Title 27 (Insurance) just off the top of my head to see how ugly the unrevised parts of the Code can be. Or, if you want to see a real lack of quality control in the legislative process, just take a look at the United States Code. Prior recodifications have been made to Titles 9 (Motor Vehicles), 10 (Public Safety), 12 (Human Services), 13 (Environment), 14 (Natural and Cultural Resources), 16 (Health), 31 (Family Law and Juvenile Law), 32 (Property), 33 (Courts and Court Officers), and 34 (Civil Law and Procedure).
In my opinion, this is one of the best projects the General Assembly undertakes. It is almost as important that the law be clear as it is for the law to be correct. (Apologies to Justice Brandeis, “Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.” Burnet v. Coronado Oil (1932)).
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