As reported in last week’s Pilot News, Indiana House Bill 1483 upholds a state ban on operation of golf carts on state or county highways but does allow town or city municipalities to make laws allowing golf cart usage. The latter clause, spelling out the legality of a community such as Culver passing ordinances allowing and regulating golf cart use within its borders, is what’s new. The ban on county and state road golf cart usage isn’t new, but fresh attention has been given the ban since the legislation officially upholds it.
“The golf cart legislation was pushed strongly by the state police,” said Dembowski, “and you can see why. You’ve got slow moving vehicles on county roads or state highways, and it’s just a safety issue.”
Dembowski said the law has sparked discussion and concern in her home area of Starke County, where use of golf carts around Bass Lake is at least as popular, if not moreso, as it is around Lake Maxinkuckee. The town of Culver, in 2007, passed an ordinance allowing golf carts to be driven on city streets by insured, licenses drivers who registered for a golf cart tag with the town and met other predefined guidelines. Use of the vehicles spiked last summer as gas prices soared, but area residents living all around the lake – but outside the official town limits in any direction – have been using golf carts for near the homes and to and from various nearby locales for years.
And, even though news of House Bill 1483 has driven home the illegality of golf cart usage around the lake (and on public streets and roads immediately around the campus of Culver Academies, which is outside Culver’s town limits), Dembowski notes this recent bill isn’t actually the one which forbids driving the carts in areas such as the east, south, and west shores of the lake.
“The new legislation allows cities and towns to pass ordinances allowing golf carts within their borders,” she explained. “Previous legislation said (golf cart use on public roads) was illegal, but it did not say counties could pass ordinances if they want to allow golf cart usage (on county roads) in a certain county.”
Dembowski said she phoned Indiana Legislative Services Attorney Susan Montgomery specifically to ask for clarification on the law, in part because of Montgomery’s relationship with the transportation committee which helped write the legislation.
“She explained it’s just by exclusion,” Dembowski said, since cities and towns can allow golf cart usage now by definition and counties weren’t specifically given that option in the bill.
Dembowski added the possibility of giving counties the authority to designate certain non-municipal areas as “golf cart friendly” zones was discussed by the committee, but the group was “being strongly urged by state police that counties not be allowed to pass ordinances allowing (carts).”
All of this lends a certain finality to the question of finding a means of alleviating the challenges many just outside Culver’s town borders will face as regular golf cart users. At least until new legislation is introduced at the state level, Marshall County’s hands, so to speak, appear to be tied.