In the May 1995 issue of the Illinois Municipal Review ("Letter From A Trustee"), I posed the question of whether we, at the local level, were unnecessarily imposing unfunded mandates on our constituents in the form of overregulation and unnecessary legislation. I suggested that prior to passing legislation, each local government official ask certain basic questions about the necessity of any legislative proposal. I ended the article by suggesting that we also, as local officials, review our existing ordinances. Almost a year has passed since I wrote that article and I suspect that even the most vigilant of us has added ordinances to our already voluminous code books. In addition to carefully scrutinizing new legislation, I propose that each unit of local government consider the repeal of outdated and/or no longer useful ordinances.

This is not a novel suggestion. One of the tasks assigned this year to the Policy Committee of the Illinois House of Representatives is to draft legislation to remove Illinois statutes which are archaic, obsolete, duplicative or no longer needed. Apparently, our Legislature recognizes that the number of statutes have grown at a geometric pace.

In addition to our statutory law, a cursory review of "The Flinn Report — Regulation (the weekly publicaton of the Ilinois General Assembly's Joint Committee on Administrative Rules) reveals the ever escalating enactment of Administrative Rules covering every conceivable subject from Coal Exploration to Deer Hunting. In recognition of this problem, the legislature has set aside one day per month to repeal or correct laws, rules and regulations that are obsolete, ludicrous, duplicative or burdensome to taxpayers. I urge each of you to contact your representative or a member of the House Policy Committee with your suggestions. In our role as local government officials, each of us has run across statutes and regulations worthy of repeal.

While we will need to rely on our representatives to address the need to repeal Illinois state laws and regulations, we, at the local level, already have control over our own legislative process. Like our state counterparts, I propose that in 1996, each local governmental body spend an hour a month at a regularly scheduled meeting to consider the repeal of ordinances that are obsolete, ludicrous, duplicative or burdensome to our constituents. Surely, each of us has ordinances which have not been enforced or even referred to in years, but remain in the books for no other reason than inertia. What seemed the appropriate subject of an ordinance 30 years ago may no longer be relevant to the problem it supposedly addressed. Indeed, the problem may no longer even exist. I have no doubt that if local governments assume this task, one year from now we will have ordinance books half the size of what they are now. More importantly, our constituents will have less regulation to contend with in the future.

In order to prevent the accumulation of useless and/or outdated ordinances in the future, I suggest that each ordinance proposed from this day forward contain a "sunset clause," requiring that the local government at some future date affirmatively vote to continue the ordinance or it is automatically repealed.

As I said in my article a year ago, "There is little doubt that most Americans feel that we are overregulated and that we are drowning in a sea of laws. We, as local elected officials, should not add to this burden. As the government closest to the people, we should reflect their frustration with this avalanche of laws and implement procedures to that we are part of the solution rather than part of the problem," Repealing useless and outdated legislation and inserting sunset clauses in all new ordinances are further solutions to this problem. •

May 1996 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 17