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Chair presents bill to consolidate consumer lending laws; hearing held to allow clarifying amendment
Summary
At a legislative committee hearing the chair presented Senate Bill 169, a recodification that consolidates consumer lending definitions into a new code title and is not intended to change policy. The committee will hold the bill to allow a clarifying amendment to preserve agency rule references.
At a legislative committee hearing, the chair presented Senate Bill 169, describing it as a consolidation of consumer lending laws into a new code title rather than a change in policy, and the committee agreed to hold the bill to allow a clarifying amendment.
The chair said the bill "is really just a consolidation bill... it's not designed to make any policy changes, in any way," and explained lawmakers found overlapping definitions scattered across multiple code titles that made the law difficult to read and use. The chair said the recodification aims to gather similar definitions and concepts into a single, clearer title and noted the effort began in the prior session.
The chair flagged a technical concern raised during drafting: some agency rules currently reference older code citations and, if the text is moved, those rules could point to the wrong provisions. To address that, the chair said they intend to include a non-substantive amendment modeled on prior recodification language to clarify that rules adopted under the previous title continue to apply under the new recodified title; the chair said the amendment would be provided to committee members before next week.
Randy Head, of Krige Duvall, representing the Indiana Financial Services Association, testified in support and thanked lawmakers and Legislative Services Agency staff for their work. "We just want to express our gratitude to Senator Baldwin, to you, mister chairman, and to everyone from LSA who touched this bill," Head said, calling recodification "very specific, and very detail oriented work," and endorsing the clarifying amendment the chair described.
The chair thanked LSA staff (naming Mason and Ross) for their work over the interim and reiterated that the bill contains no substantive policy changes. The committee did not vote on the measure; the chair said the committee would "hold it this week" to allow time to prepare the amendment and preferred to adopt the technical fix in committee rather than on the second reading. With no further discussion, the chair adjourned the hearing.
The next procedural step is for the committee to receive and review the promised clarifying amendment before the bill proceeds.
