Legislation to implement code revision of multiple laws into a new Local Government article is advancing through the legislature, with votes on the Senate floor today granting further approval. The code revision process involves appropriate stakeholders to bring about a non-substantive modernization of relevant laws, organizing them into more coherent named articles (replacing the historic numbered articles in place for decades).

From the Department of Legislative Services website:

To fulfill its statutory duty to “carry on continuous full time formal revision of statutory law,” the legal staff of the Office of Policy Analysis prepares drafts of proposed revised articles of the Annotated Code of Maryland, which are reviewed by article review committees composed of lawyers who are experts in the area of law being revised. When the drafting and review of a revised article is completed, a bill to enact the article into law is introduced in the General Assembly. The process is overseen by the Code Revision Committee, which is appointed by the Legislative Policy Committee and which plans the sequence of revised articles, appoints article review committees, and generally supervises the progress of each article.

The goals of code revision are clarity in expression and arrangement, accuracy in translating the source law without substantive change, and consistency internally and with the other revised articles of the code. Each section of a revised article is followed by a revisor’s note that identifies the current law that the revised section will replace and explains any significant changes made in the revision process.

The two bills effecting the code revision are:

HB 472 – Code Revision
HB 733 – Cross-References and Corrections