The Saga of NYC's Administrative Code
How hard is it to get all the up-to-date law in one place?
We have not yet fully solved the problem of how to get all the up-to-date laws in one, easily accessible place.
This might surprise a lot of people. Surely the law is somewhere everyone can get it? Surely it has always been that way—how would things have worked otherwise?
Well: it hasn’t always been that way, it still isn’t entirely that way, and things worked reasonably well due to brute-force legal work and the American people’s good tendency to comply with what they reasonably assume the law to be.
To ground this in concrete reality, let’s look at New York City’s book of local statute, the administrative code.1
👉 To review “statute” and the other kinds of law, read An Autodidact's Guide to Learning About the Government, or: What is "the law"
The New York City Administrative Code
1898→1906→1916→1938→1985
What are now known as the five boroughs fused together into one city on January 1, 1898. This was known as “the consolidation,” and the new city was governed by one charter that set out the primary organs and procedures of the government (similar to a constitution).
But what happened to the laws that former cities like Brooklyn and Long Island City had? Their charters were all erased and replaced—but what about their many local laws outside of the charter?
Per the new charter, one of two things happened:
The local laws of the former New York City (when it was just Manhattan and the Bronx) extended to cover all five boroughs.2
The local laws of the various localities prior to consolidation would continue in effect, until they were centralized by the new city government.3
Needless to say, the situation quickly became chaotic. NYC had one charter, but many books of local statute, several of which only applied to specific parts of the now-consolidated city. Although the city tried to compile these together into one unified “Code of Ordinances” in both 1906 and 1916,4 these were generally regarded as failures. Extraneous books of ordinances remained, and the “unified” book was confusing and badly ordered.
1936 breaks the logjam
Several events conspired in 1936 to push the city into creating a truly unified, well-ordered book of city statute.
The New York State Legislature created the Board of Statutory Consolidation that year5, the point of which was to finally get the job done after many years of failed attempts. They were charged with creating the now-called Administrative Code of the City of New York.
New York City completed a charter revision commission for a whole new charter—a new charter that would rely on a complementary, new book of city statute. This charter was set to go into effect as of January 1, 1938.
The new charter’s effective date set an urgent deadline to complete the wholesale replacement of the city’s statutes, a move that would need to ultimately be approved by the New York State Legislature.
After the Board of Statutory Consolidation completed their work on November 27, 1937, NYC’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia asked New York Governor Herbert Lehman to convene “an extraordinary session” of the Legislature to pass the new administrative code prior to the impending January 1 new-charter deadline, “…if a period of confusion and grave uncertainty is to be avoided.”6
In a message to the Legislature, the governor said that he hadn’t read the administrative code bill (which was 3,350 pages across three volumes), but that he trusted the mayor’s representation of its contents.
Therefore on Dec. 3, 1937, pursuant to the power vested in me by Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution, I issued a proclamation convening your honorable bodies in extraordinary session on the sixteenth day of December, 1937, at 12 o'clock noon.
I have not received copies of the proposed bills, and have not had an opportunity to examine them. I have received assurance, however, from the Mayor of the City of New York, as I understand have your legislative leaders, that the bills do not contain any substantive changes whatsoever in the existing laws governing the City of New York.7
Tammany Democrats in the State Assembly were not immediately inclined to take the mayor’s word for it, although the Legislature eventually did pass the bill.
And so we got the now-called Administrative Code of 1938! Although a much-needed improvement upon its predecessors, even it would become burdened by decades of inconsistent amendment, section numbering, and more. By 1975, it was clear that the admin code needed another overhaul.
1975-1985: the decade that produced the current administrative code
The 1985 administrative code has a lot of analogs with its 1938 predecessor.8 It too emerged from a charter revision commission, in this case the one in 1975. Councilman Peter Vallone, who would go on to become the Council’s first Speaker in the post-1989 government, shepherded the process for the next ten years:9
Work on the revision began in 1975, when the Council majority leader, Thomas J. Cuite, named Mr. Vallone and Councilman Edward L. Sadowsky, a Queens Democrat, as liaison officials to the Charter Revision Committee. Mr. Cuite set up a subcommittee to work on the recodification.
And like its 1938 predecessor, the 1985 revision sought to clarify the internal numbering and reference system of city statute, as well as remove old and unconstitutional provisions (“reporters can quarter their horses at the foot of City Hall,” “no one can wear a bathing suit…on city streets unless the garments cover that portion of the body ‘extending from shoulders to the point midway between the hips and knees'”).10
Some of the city's laws are not only outdated but “ancient, unconstitutional and archaic,” Mr. Vallone said. Banishing those legal anachronisms, however, is not the only reason for the proposed revision.
“As a practicing lawyer,” Mr. Vallone said, “anyone trying to find anything in the administrative code realized it was just a hodgepodge of unrelated numbers, it had no meaning.” The revision would include a simplified numbering system.
And finally, the 1985 admin code needed to be approved by the state government. Governor (Mario) Cuomo signed it in August 1985. It clocked in at 3,088 pages:
The cost of printing 2,500 copies of the bill was about $90,000, said John Faso, an official of the Legislature's Bill Drafting Commission.
While the state normally pays for the printing of bills, New York City paid the cost of printing this one, four volumes of administrative-code legislation.11
We’ve lived with that version of the administrative code ever since. In March of 1985, Peter Vallone said those updates would “bring our administrative code into the 20th century, rather than mired in the 19th century, where it is now.”12
The astute reader will note that we updated the code for the 20th century only 15 years before that century was set to end, and will wonder if our current admin code is equipped for the twenty-first century.
Highlights and conclusions from the story of the administrative code
Getting all the up-to-date law in one place, nicely ordered, is hard. One bottleneck: changes to the law require legislative action. One can’t simply “clean it up.” Even legal publishers with direct relationships with legislatures have to be very careful in how they treat and annotate the law they publish.13
New York City has long struggled to get all of its relevant statutes into one book, and to keep that book up to date.
The task is doable! A few people, working over the long term, can push the process forward. With modern tools, perhaps it’s more possible than ever. As Peter Vallone said in 1985, when a NYT reporter asked him why “so sweeping a revision had never before been attempted”: “There's no longevity in politics…I started this thing in 1975. I was re-elected twice, but if I lost, I wouldn't be working on it, right? Listen, you've got to be nuts to do something like this anyway.”14
New York City is not alone in its legal compilation difficulties. Essentially every jurisdiction—local, state, and federal—shares them. Some have solved them more than others. Some are moving their law into digital-native formats,15 some are not. If this topic is interesting to you, know that it’s an active field. As a starting point, try reading “How to Write a Law,” which is a primer for the field of legislative drafting.
After that, ask yourself: “How would I systematize all the laws written across decades, trying to make them backwards compatible with everything that came before?” Have fun!
Despite its name, it is not a book of administrative law. The city’s book of administrative law is called the Rules of the City of New York.
See §1172 of the consolidation charter for an example of pre-1898 New York City law extending to cover post-1898 New York City, which is entitled “Sanitary code.” (emphasis added):
The sanitary code adopted and declared as such at the meeting of the board of health of the health department of The City of New York, held in the city as formerly constituted and bounded on the second day of June, eighteen hundred and seventy-three, as amended in accordance with law, is hereby declared to be binding and in force in the city constituted by this act, and shall continue to be so binding and in force, except as the same may, from time to time, be revised, altered, amended or annulled by the board of health as herein provided. And it shall be the duty of said board, immediately upon organization under this act, to cause to be conformed to this title the sanitary code of ordinances adopted by the existing department of health, and the departments and boards of health existing in the several parts of The City of New York before the passage of this act, which shall be called the "sanitary code." Said board of health is hereby authorized and empowered from time to time, to add to or to alter, amend or annul any part of the said sanitary code, and may therein publish additional provisions for the security of life and health in The City of New York, and distribute appropriate powers and duties to the members and employees of the department of health, not inconsistent with the constitution or laws of this state.
See §647 of the consolidation charter for an example of old laws continuing until replaced, which is entitled “Continuation and repeal of existing laws; building code.” (emphasis added):
The several acts in effect at the time of the passage of this act concerning, affecting, or relating to the construction, alteration or removal of buildings or other structures in any of the municipal and public corporations included within the city of New York as constituted by this act are hereby continued in full force and effect in such municipal and public corporations respectively, except in so far as the same are inconsistent with or are modified by this act; provided, however, that the municipal assembly shall have power to establish and from time to time to amend a code of ordinances, to be known as the "building code," providing for all matters concerning, affecting, or relating to the construction, alteration, or removal of buildings or structures erected or to be erected in The City of New York, as constituted by this act, and for the purpose of preparing such code to appoint and employ a commission of experts; and provided further that upon the establishment of such code the several acts first above mentioned shall cease to have any force or effect, and are hereby repealed, but such repeal shall not take effect until such "building code" shall be established by the municipal assembly as herein provided.
The less-than-smooth run-up to the 1916 code of ordinances, which was hammered out in 1914-1915, is plain in this New York Times piece from July 7, 1915: “In the last year the feud died and a new code, satisfactory to all parties, was drawn up. It is going to the Assembly in sections, and sixteen sections out of thirty-two have already been passed. It was not until yesterday that the vital sections were voted upon.”
This piece from January 25, 1915, carries this subtitle: “Work Done in 1914 Will End Demand for Board [of Aldermen]'s Abolition," He Says. REVISED BUILDING CODE Codification of Ordinances Is Among Long List of Accomplishments, the President Specifies.”
Well, the Board of Aldermen failed in their 1916 codification task, and that house was abolished in the 1936 city charter revision commission.
1936 N.Y. Laws ch. 483.
You can find a great summary recounting of the final days of the 1938 administrative code’s enactment in “Text of Governor Lehman's Message” from The New York Times, published December 17, 1937:
Laws are often referred to with two separate dates, and inconsistently so, throughout various sources. They have an enactment date (when they were passed/signed), and an effective date (when they went into force). Some laws are known by their enactment dates, some by their effective dates. The ‘38 admin code is known by the latter, the ‘85 code by the former.
The 1975 charter amendments also gave us ULURP, the modern community district system, and so much more. See “Repealing Dated Laws: The Navel Could Show” from The New York Times, published March 24, 1985.
“3,088-Page Revision of City’s Laws Signed” from The New York Times, published August 13, 1985.
If you don’t get permission to publish the law, then your publication is not “evidence of the law,” or “evidence that the law exists.” It would not be admitted in court or elsewhere. Careful compliance with constitutional and legislative requirements is essential if your law is to be…law. Per §1556 of New York City’s consolidation charter: “A code or other volume containing the ordinances and by-laws of the city published by authority of the municipal assembly shall be prima facie evidence in all courts of justice of the authenticity of such ordinances and by-laws.”
You will find similar provisions everywhere, including the U.S. Code, our federally compiled statutes (§204). The Office of the Law Revision Council in the U.S. House of Representatives does great work. Here they explain more of the nuance of what actually counts as law.
New York State actually had a lot of trouble with this throughout the nineteenth century especially. Many companies published the state’s “Revised Statutes,” but not all of them retained the permission to do on behalf of the government. But people got used to them, so many different versions of state law proliferated! Just as there is a story for NYC’s administrative code, there is a story for New York State’s consolidated laws.
See “Repealing Dated Laws: The Navel Could Show”
This “you gotta be nuts” sentiment is common among people who’ve actually done big things in NYC. Consider this line from Saving Central Park about establishing the Central Park Conservancy: “There has to be a Pollyannaish leader who is something of a ‘zealous nut’ in the first place, you must never take no for an answer, and you must accommodate, or simply endure, the opposition of your opponents.”
See DC-Law for Washington, D.C.’s city law, and the U.S. Code for our federal statute.