Committee sends statute-cleanup bill to House floor with due-pass recommendation

House State Affairs Committee Chair Representative Crane moved and the committee approved sending House Bill 14 to the House floor with a due-pass recommendation after a presentation from Representative Mike Boyle.

Representative Boyle told the committee the bill expands the committee’s recent work on administrative rulemaking to the state statutes themselves, saying the measure would make statutes "easier to read" and remove obsolete or unnecessary language. "Let's get this done and go home before we do more harm," Boyle said during his presentation.

The bill, Boyle said, would allow agencies, as they review statutes, to flag other obsolete or replacement language for lawmakers’ consideration so lawmakers can systematically clean up the code over time. He described the effort as ongoing and said it aims to reduce complexity legislators face when locating statutory provisions.

Representative Barbieri supported the motion on continuity grounds, saying the proposal "will go a long way toward establishing continuity without binding future legislatures" and praised the effort to simplify code sections and administrative processes.

After brief discussion, Representative Crane moved the committee recommendation. The motion passed on a voice vote; no roll-call tally was recorded in the transcript.

The committee recorded no public testimony on the bill at the committee meeting.