SB 490 – Repeal of Non-Code Sections

One aspect of legislation that remains a mystery to most people, including many in the legal profession, is the non-code section of a statute. Most legislation amends the Indiana Code in some fashion – it modifies an existing part of the code or adds a new code section. But, at the tail end of some legislation you’ll see provisions that don’t amend any sections of the Indiana Code.

Typically, these non-code provisions are used for transitional measures or other provisions that won’t be law long enough to justify having them clutter up the Code for years or decades after they become inactive. For example, let’s say you want to create a board of 3 people with staggered 3 year terms such that, every year, a new board member is replacing an old one. For the first couple of years, you’d have board members with abbreviated terms – Member 1 has a one year term, Member 2 has a two year term, and Member 3 has the standard three year term. After that, everyone has the standard three year term and, because of the abbreviated initial terms, the following standard terms are staggered. There is no very good reason to make the language concerning the initial staggered terms into permanent additions to the Indiana Code. So, you write them as Non-Code provisions – having the force of law, but which don’t show up in the Code.

Anyway, the Legislative Services Agency and the Code Revision Commission of the General Assembly have put forth the extraordinary effort of cleaning up the mess that has accumulated in the Non-Code stables since 1984. SB 490, authored by Sens. Holdman, Delph, and Taylor contains a general repeal of Non-Code provisions with a laundry list of exemptions. The bill is generally impenetrable, even to a legislative geek like myself. So, I’ll just trust in the LSA and the Code Revision Commission to have done it right as they so often do.

And, once again, I’ll take the time to comment on how much better our code of laws is than most of the others I’ve seen. Say what you will about the stupor inducing language of legislation; the Indiana Code is generally a relatively easy to read document, particularly when compared to the United States Code and other state codes. And we owe that to the employees of the Legislative Services Agency, the legislators and experts who serve on the Code Revision Commission, and the leadership of the General Assembly which has generally been willing to put aside their other differences to agree on rules that have made our Code a very usable document.