Committee hears technical corrections bill to modernize Vermont Statutes Annotated

Ben Novogratzky, a staff attorney with the Office of Legislative Council, told the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee that members were reviewing a committee bill of technical corrections intended to ready multiple forthcoming volumes of the Vermont Statutes Annotated for republication.

"This is a piece, technical corrections bill, house housekeeping adjacent, we'll call it," Novogratzky said, and later acknowledged that the measure covers a large number of largely non-substantive edits: "I'll try to make this as interesting as possible, in spite of the hundred pages of sort of rote technical, non substantive changes."

The bill is presented as a committee bill, Novogratzky said, which means that if the committee approves it, it would go to the floor for second reading and be assigned a bill marker; the drafting request number remained on the draft shown to the committee. The work focuses primarily on revisions to Title 3, Title 21 and Title 23 of the Vermont Statutes Annotated, with additional scattered edits across other titles.

Key categories of change described in committee discussion include: removing references to defunct entities (Novogratzky pointed to the Lake Champlain Bridge Commission and the Tri-State Regional Medical Needs Board), converting gendered pronouns and archaic phrasing to neutral or current style, replacing the term "regulations" with "rules" where appropriate for state practice, correcting cross-references, adding or moving "reader assistance" headings for clarity, and standardizing list and capitalization conventions across chapters. Novogratzky gave multiple section-by-section examples, noting recurring edits such as changing "regulations" to "rules," striking archaic words such as "thereof" and "wherein," and replacing outdated criminal terms like "willful" with "intentional."

Committee members asked procedural and drafting questions during the brief discussion. One representative asked whether the changes would renumber subdivisions when sections are repealed; Novogratzky explained the office typically leaves repealed sections in place rather than renumbering to avoid creating cross-reference "domino effects." Another member asked whether the draft would adopt singular "the governor" instead of gendered pronouns; Novogratzky said the practice is to repeat the officeholder title (for example, "the governor" or "the commissioner") rather than substituting singular "they."

Novogratzky also flagged a targeted substantive sensitivity edit late in the draft: at one point he said the bill would "get rid of an acronym that can be considered offensive," and later noted more directly, "We are we are striking the offensive term, ladies and gentlemen." The transcript does not give the acronym or its location in statute text.

No formal motion or recorded committee vote appears in the transcript excerpts provided. The discussion focused on technical drafting choices and cross-reference cleanups rather than policy changes. Novogratzky repeatedly described the changes as stylistic or non-substantive edits intended to align the annotated statutes with current drafting and publication conventions.

The committee moved through examples in many titles beyond the primary three, including references to Titles 5, 7, 9, 13, 18, 19, 20 and 23. Novogratzky noted small fixes such as correcting an incorrect cross-reference to the Social Security Act and changing capitalization and punctuation to match the Office of Legislative Council's style conventions.

Committee members and staff interjected clarifying questions at multiple points; the transcript captures brief exchanges asking the drafter to slow down or to confirm whether a given change was a typo or an intentional style edit. Novogratzky acknowledged the iterative nature of the drafting process and that more technical edits would likely follow in future sessions.

Without a recorded vote or final procedural action in the provided transcript, the committee's formal disposition of the bill is not specified. The draft, as described aloud, would proceed by committee approval to the House floor for second reading and assignment of a bill marker if the committee advances it.

Looking ahead, Novogratzky said the primary drivers of the bill are preparation of new volumes of the Vermont Statutes Annotated scheduled for republication and the Office of Legislative Council's effort to standardize drafting style across titles. The transcript does not include a date for any committee vote or next steps on the floor.