Riley, J.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants-Respondents, Kent W. Abernathy, Commissioner of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and Bernard Carter, Prosecuting Attorney for Lake County (collectively, BMV), appeal from the consolidated trial court’s denials of the BMV’s motions to correct error, and in one case, the BMV’s motion for relief from judgment, in which the trial court upheld its grant of the five Appellees-Petitioners’, Eric C. Gulden (Gulden), Jeremy Crawford (Crawford), David J. Klahn (Klahn), John P. Martin (Martin), and James M. Panozzo (Panozzo) (collectively, Appellees), petitions for judicial review of the BMV’s determinations that each of them qualified as an habitual traffic violator (HTV).
We reverse.
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ISSUE
The BMV raises one issue on appeal, which we restate as: Whether Indiana Code section 9-30-10-4(e), which requires the BMV to use the dates of the offenses rather than the dates of the judgments in determining a person’s status as an HTV, violates the ex post facto clauses of the Indiana and United States Constitutions, as applied to Appellees who committed their third HTV-qualifying offense prior to the effective date of subsection 4(e) but whose third judgment was entered after that provision became effective.
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The HTV statute aims to regulate the dangerous conduct of the driver, and is a “protection of the remaining public using the highways.” Hamilton v. State ex rel. Van Natta, 323 N.E.2d 659, 660 (Ind. Ct. App. 1975), reh’g denied, appeal dismissed, 424 U.S. 901 (1976) (quoting State ex rel. Van Natta v. Rising, 310 N.E.2d 873, 875 (Ind. 1974)). Because the addition of subsection 4(e) to the HTV statute only sought to clarify the calculation method used in the HTV determination, it did not amend the offense nor alter the penalty and was procedural in nature. See Weaver, 845 N.E.2d at 1070. Even though, as here, where the statutory amendment “may work to the disadvantage of a defendant,” this hardship does not propel a procedural change into the ex post facto realm. Hayden, 771 N.E.2d at 102. Accordingly, we reverse the trial court’s judgment.
CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing, we conclude that Indiana Code section 9-30-10-4(e), which requires the BMV to use the dates of the offenses rather than the dates of the judgments in determining a person’s status as a HTV, is a procedural amendment which does not violate the ex post facto clauses of the Indiana and United States Constitutions.
Reversed.
Altice, J. concurs
Brown, J. dissents with separate opinion
Brown, Judge, dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the addition of subsection (e) to the habitual violators statute at Ind. Code § 9-30-10-4 was procedural in nature. The majority concludes that the amendment did change the elements of the habitual violator offense, but rather sought only to clarify the calculation method used in the habitual violator determination. I disagree.
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