Outdated laws are often fodder for comedians like Jay Leno. It seems laughable that there is a law banning people from putting ice cream cones in their pockets in Lexington, Kentucky. But according to Mansfield City Law Director John Spon, outdated laws are no laughing matter.
“An outdated law can expose the city to potential litigation,” said Spon. “If we don’t modernize our codified ordinances, they become less relevant and possibly unenforceable to meet critical problems.”
What makes a law outdated?
In 2013 alone the federal government passed seventy-one laws while the State of Ohio passed twenty-six. All of the local ordinances must be aligned with that new legislation, thus a change at the state or federal level can necessitate a change at the local level if the local law is contradictory.
Since Director Spon took office his team has made every possible effort to keep up with new changes, but a backlog of outdated laws piled up for at least fifty years.
Like many city departments, the Law Director’s office is short staffed. Operating with two less assistant law directors makes it difficult to keep up with the regular duties of the office, thus a complete overhaul of the codified ordinances is a major undertaking.
“We’re talking about hundreds of pages of ordinances,” said Spon.
“My position is that we should hire additional full time assistant law directors back to what it was just four years ago and to dedicate one of those law directors fully to this very large task.”
Still, Spon realizes that given the city’s financial situation, the odds of expanding his department are not that likely in the immediate future.
“We’re going to do it on an as needed basis and I’m not waiting until we have someone to dedicate to this job. We’re going to take this first chapter and once we feel we have something that is a good model, we’ll take it to council. Doing it this way will take several years to do,” stated Spon.
First on the list is addressing Chapter 737, which addresses peddlers, solicitors, and canvassers. The law needs to be updated to clarify terms, strengthen requirements, and increase penalties for noncompliance.
Currently members of the community, the elderly in particular, occasionally fall prey to scams that can be prevented. Updating this law would protect the community and require licensure and identification requirements for people to do business door to door.
Another area of ongoing concern in the city is illegal dumping and regulation of junk yards. Those laws have not been updated since 1964. In the intervening fifty years the state and federal governments have passed numerous regulations and reforms that are not reflected in the current local ordinance.
“Because there has been greater dissemination of knowledge on all aspects of the environment I’m certain that the risk to the environment today is far greater than it was known to be in 1964,” said Spon.
At nearly every city council meeting Director Spon mentions the need to do an overhaul of all the codified ordinances, yet members of council have yet to respond. In the current economic climate what would be the harm in putting off such a daunting project?
“The harm is that as the city we would not be fulfilling our fiduciary obligation to the very best that we can on behalf of our city. I don’t want our city, the City of Mansfield, to wallow, just to be an average city. I think the city of Mansfield is very special. I think we should have a model codified ordinance and it should be a model for other cities,” said Spon.
We’re going to take this first chapter and once we feel we have something that is a good model, we’ll take it to council. Doing it this way will take several years to do,” said Law Director John Spon.
