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Committee reviews proposal to add year to act numbers to ease public searches
Summary
The House Government Operations & Military Affairs committee heard an introductory presentation on H.831, a bill to require the secretary of state to include the year of passage in the numbering of acts; counsel said changes would amend 3 VSA §104 and begin in the next biennium, and the committee asked staff to draft precise language.
The House Government Operations & Military Affairs committee on Thursday took up H.831, a short-form bill that would require the secretary of state to include the year of passage in the number assigned to acts of the General Assembly, proponents said, to reduce public confusion when citizens look up legislation.
Representative Coffin (Windsor 2), who presented the bill, said adding the year would make it easier for residents to find and follow bills. "They gave me testimony to support a bill that had already passed, which turned into act 120 of 2024," Coffin said, describing a constituent who mistakenly referenced a bill number from a different year. He argued the change would improve transparency and public participation in the legislative process.
Tucker Anderson, legislative counsel, told the committee the bill proposes to amend 3 VSA section 104, the statute that delegates authority to the secretary of state to assign public-law numbers to acts passed by the General Assembly. "The proposal is to be specific in the form and format for those public law numbers," Anderson said, and recommended the change start in the next biennium so current session numbering would not be retroactively altered.
Committee members debated formatting details, including whether to record the year as a four-digit number and whether the year or the act number should come first, noting that search engines and electronic records could be affected by the chosen form. One member said a four-digit year would likely avoid confusion in future centuries; another observed that retroactively renumbering past acts would be a significant workload for the secretary of state's office.
Anderson said he would draft bill language for the committee and flagged the need to coordinate with the House clerk, the Senate secretary and other parliamentary offices, which currently number bills. "I can get that ready for the committee," he said.
The committee did not take a vote on H.831 during the session. Members directed counsel to prepare draft statutory text and to refine the numbering format with input about digital-search impacts. The committee adjourned for lunch and said it would reconvene later with guests from the Vermont State Youth Council and to continue work on the alcohol omnibus bill.
