BALTIMORE COUNTY CODE

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VOLUME I

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Local Legislation current through Bill No. 5-19

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CURRENT OFFICIALS
of
BALTIMORE COUNTY, MARYLAND

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John A. Olszewski, Jr.
County Executive

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Stacy L. Rodgers
County Administrative Officer

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Councilmanic District 1, Tom Quirk, Chairman
Councilmanic District 2, Israel "Izzy" Patoka
Councilmanic District 3, Wade Kach
Councilmanic District 4, Julian E. Jones, Jr.
Councilmanic District 5, David Marks
Councilmanic District 6, Cathy A. Bevins
Councilmanic District 7, Todd K. Crandell
County Council

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Michael E. Field
County Attorney

Gregory E. Gaskins
Deputy County Attorney

ADOPTING ORDINANCE

COUNTY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE COUNTY, MARYLAND
Legislative Session 2016, Legislative Day No. 8
Resolution No. 49-16

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Mrs. Vicki Almond , Chairwoman
By Request of County Executive

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By the County Council, April 18, 2016

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A RESOLUTION to legalize the Baltimore County Code of 2015.

WHEREAS, Section 1005(a) of the Baltimore County Charter requires the County Council to "provide for a compilation and codification of this Charter and all public local laws, acts, rules, regulations, resolutions and ordinances, having the force and effect of law" not greater than every ten years; and

WHEREAS, Chapter 159 of the Laws of Maryland. 2015 legalizes "the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code, to the extent to which that code or supplement contains laws enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland"; and

WHEREAS, Chapter 159 of the Laws of Maryland, 2015 took effect July 1, 2015; and

WHEREAS, the Municipal Code Corporation is prepared to issue the Baltimore County Code of 2015;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNTY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE COUNTY, MARYLAND, that the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code, published by Municipal Code Corporation, be and the same is hereby legalized; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this Code and its later supplements shall be deemed and taken in all the courts of this State and by all public officials of this State to be evidence of the Charter and the public local laws, rules, regulations, resolutions and ordinances enacted by the County Council of Baltimore County contained therein; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code shall take effect on the later of the publication of the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code or the passage of this Resolution.

READ AND PASSED this 2 ^nd day of MAY , 2016.

BY ORDER

	/s/ /Thomas J. Peddicord, Jr. Secretary

ITEM: RESOLUTION 49-16

LAWRENCE J. HOGAN, JR., Governor

Ch. 159

Chapter 159

(Senate Bill 330)

AN ACT concerning

Baltimore County Code of Public Local Laws - 2015 Edition - Legalization

FOR the purpose of legalizing the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code of Public Local Laws and any supplement to the extent to which that code or supplement contains laws enacted by the General Assembly; and generally relating to the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code of Public Local Laws.

SECTION 1. BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF MARYLAND, That the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code of Public Local Laws and any supplement to the 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code of Public Local Laws, to the extent to which that code or supplement contains laws enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland, is legalized. The 2015 Edition of the Baltimore County Code of Public Local Laws and any supplement shall be deemed and taken in all the courts of the State and by all public officials of the State and its political subdivisions to be evidence of the law enacted by the General Assembly contained in the code or a supplement to it.

SECTION 2. AND BE IT FURTHER ENACTED, That this Act shall take effect July 1, 2015.

Approved by the Governor, May 12, 2015.

Preface

The initial Baltimore County Code of 2015 constitutes a republication of the Baltimore County Code of 2003, as updated through Bill 20-15. As this Code is a republication of the prior Code, the numbering scheme used in this Code is the same as in the prior Code and in subsequent legislation. Thus section 1-1-101 of this Code is also section 1-1-101 of the 2003 Code. History notes appearing in parentheses at the end of each section in the Code trace the derivation of each section back to the 1988 County Code. By the use of the comparative tables that appear at the back of this Code, the user of the Code may locate any legislation adopted by the county after the legalization of the 2003 Code and any public local law adopted by the General Assembly of Maryland which has been included herein.

How to Read this Code

Section numbering

In the Code revision that created the Baltimore County Code, 2003, the County decided to mimic the legislative drafting style of the Maryland General Assembly because of its emphasis on order and clarity. One of the innovations was to adopt Maryland style for numbering subsections, paragraphs and subparagraphs within sections. Accordingly, we have attempted to use the following order and terminology with consistency:

Section § 18-2-101. ADOPTION OF ORDERS AND REGULATIONS.

Subsection (a) Authority in general

Paragraph (1) …..

Sub-paragraph or sub-item (i) …

Subsubparagraph or subsubitem 1. …

Subsubsubparagraph or subsubsubitem A. …

Legislative History

The bottom of each section contains a brief legislative history for the section. A typical legislative history looks like this:

§ 21-16-102. DECLARATION OF POLICY.

….

(1988 Code, § 24-221) (Bill No. 72-00, § 2, 7-1-2004; Bill No. 104-02, § 1, 1-5-2003; Bill No. 73-03, § 50, 7-1-2004; Bill No. 67-07, § 1, 10-14-2007)

The first parentheses shows that current § 21-16-102 was derived from § 24-221 of the 1988 Code. As noted earlier, this Code is identical to the 2003 Code up to Bill 20-15. If there is no reference to 1988 Code, it means that the section was enacted after the adoption of the 2003 Code or this 2015 Code.

The second parentheses shows the legislative history of the section. The number of the bill is to be read this way: Bill Number-Year of Introduction; thus Bill 72-00 was the 72 ^nd bill introduced in the year 2000. The "§" shows in which section of the bill this particular section was amended or added to the Code. Thus, § 21-16-102 was amended in § 2 of Bill 72-00. The date shows the effective date of this particular section in the bill. Bill 72-00 was a Code Revision bill that contained a delayed effective date. That is why its effective date is 1.5 years after that of Bill 104-02, which went into effect on January 5, 2003. Note that statutes can occasionally be amended in more than one section of a bill.

A reader who wishes to trace the history of section further back will have to consult the 1988 Code and earlier Codes.

Editor's Notes

Editor's notes convey information that is not obvious from the text of the statute. They serve primarily two purposes: to give information about uncodified sections of bills and to alert the reader to changes made by the Editor with the permission of the County Attorney.

Uncodified sections: This refers to a section of bill containing law that is usually of a temporary or transitory nature. It is uncodified because the language is not drafted into the text of a statute that will be supplemented into the Code. Often, they are used to provide for sunset provisions or to indicate that a sunset provision has been repealed:

Editor's Note:

Section 1 of Bill 40-06 repeals the sunset provision contained in Section 9 of Bill 49-02.

They can also be used to convey information about how to apply a provision of a bill:

Editor's note:

Section 5 of Bill No. 42-07 provides that this act does not apply to members of the Employees retirement system on pay schedule II of the classification and compensation plan.

Changes made by the publisher: Occasionally, the County Council will pass two bills at around the same time that add two sections to the Code with the same section number. This is not usually a mistake. It tends to occur when two separate bills are pending and neither should be written based on the assumption that one bill or both bills will pass. When this happens, the County Attorney allows the publisher to renumber one section and include an Editor's note:

Editor's note:

Section 1 of Bill No. 48-07 provided that the language in this section was to be added to the code as § 5-1-304; however, § 5-1-304 was added to the code by section 1 of Bill No. 47-07, so this language was renumbered as § 5-1-305.

Editor's notes are only included at the discretion of the County Attorney. The County Attorney tries to ensure that important information is included in the Code but not all uncodified sections of bills are discussed in Editor's notes. To be certain, the reader should consult the bill archives contained on the County Council's web pages or the printed versions, which can generally be found in the Circuit Court bar library, some branches of the Baltimore County Public Library or the library of the State Department of Legislative Services in Annapolis.

Looseleaf Supplements

A special feature of this Code is the looseleaf system of binding and supplemental service, by which the Code will be kept up-to-date periodically. Upon the final passage of amendatory ordinances, they will be properly edited and the page or pages affected will be reprinted. These new pages will be distributed to holders of copies of the Code, with instructions for the manner of inserting the new pages and deleting the obsolete pages.

Each amendment, when incorporated into this Code through a supplement, may be cited as a part of the Baltimore County Code, 2015 as amended. Since the 2015 Code is based on the 2003 Code as updated through Bill 20-15, the first supplement to the 2015 Code will be the first Supplement published in 2016 beginning with Bill 38-15 (no bill passed between Bill 20-15 and Bill 38-15 amending a section of the Code).

The successful maintenance of this Code up-to-date at all times will depend largely upon the holder of the volume. As revised sheets are received it will then become the responsibility of the holder to have the amendments inserted according to the attached instructions. It is strongly recommended by the publishers that all such amendments be inserted immediately upon receipt to avoid misplacing them and, in addition, that all deleted pages be saved and filed for historical reference purposes.

Acknowledgments

The publication of this Code was under the direct supervision of Dennis Sinnett, Vice President of Supplementation, and Janet Cramer, Editor, of the Municipal Code Corporation, Tallahassee, Florida. Credit is gratefully given to the other members of the publisher's staff for their sincere interest and able assistance throughout the project.

The publishers are most grateful to Michael E. Field, County Attorney, for his cooperation and assistance during the progress of the work on this Code.