« Law - More on: Dad sues to prevent son's circumcision | Main | Ind. Decisions - Supreme Court issues five decisions today »

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Ind. Law - Part I of: Should the General Assembly make the law available to the citizens of the State?

[Note: Access Part II here.]

Introduction.

Under the rubric of "saving money," the General Assembly and its staff have systematically, over the past half-dozen years, dismantled systems for publishing and preserving the laws and rules of the State that have been in place for well over 30 years, some for more than 150 years.

Printed copies of the Indiana Code, the Acts of Indiana, the Indiana Administrative Code, and the Indiana Register have not been available to most libraries or the general public now for a number of years.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly has set up a complete printing plant, along with a book bindery, inhouse. This printing plant is now used to produce, not only printed copies of bills and the House and Senate Journals, as has been done inhouse since the late 1990s, but also printed and bound volumes of the laws and rules, with distribution limited mainly to members of the General Assembly and its staff.

The beginnings of these changes may be traced to SEA 506 and HEA 1196 from the 2002 session. A provision tucked away in the House bill gave the House speaker, Senate president pro tempore and Legislative Council power to tap a special fund to pay for retired lawmakers' and retired legislative aides' health benefits.

SECTION 1 of SEA 506 would have created the special fund:

(a) Any unused appropriations made for the purpose of printing or distributing legislative bills, the Indiana Code, the Indiana Administrative Code, the Indiana Register, the Acts of Indiana, or other legislative documents shall be transferred by the executive director of the legislative services agency to the fund established under this section. The council or its personnel subcommittee may transfer other unused appropriations to the fund.

(b) There is established a fund for the purposes of subsection (a). Money in the fund at the end of the state fiscal year does not revert to the state general fund but remains available for expenditure as provided by law. Interest earned by the fund shall remain in the fund.

The savings to fund the the legislative health care benefits were to come from the changes proposed by SECTION 2 of the SEA -- it provided that the following documents were to be distributed, by electronic format only, to state and local government officials, public libraries and educational institutions, and the general public -- the Indiana Code, the Indiana Administrative Code, the annual session laws [the Acts of Indiana], and the Indiana Register. The General Assembly was excluded from the electronic-only distribution requirement.

SEA 506 did not become law because Gov. O'Bannon vetoed it. (See this 1/6/06 ILB entry for more information.)

After the veto the General Assembly apparently decided to get around the lack of a dediciated fund by drawing money to finance their lifetime health benefits directly from the general fund. As for SECTION 2, the printing "savings" -- over the past few years the legislature has proceeded to eliminate the printed versions of the named publications, except for their own use.

The most recent example: Elimination of the Indiana Register

In 2005 the General Assembly enacted HEA 1135, amending the then-existing IC 4-22-8-2, which had provided:

Sec. 2. The publisher shall publish a serial publication with the name Indiana Register at least six (6) times each year.
to read instead (new language is in boldface):
Sec. 2. (a) The publisher shall publish a serial publication with the name Indiana Register at least six (6) times each year.

(b) Notwithstanding any law, after June 30, 2006, the publisher shall publish the Indiana Register in electronic form only. However, the publisher shall distribute a printed copy of the Indiana Register to each federal depository library in Indiana.

(c) The publisher may meet the requirement to publish the Indiana Register electronically by permanently publishing a copy of the Indiana Register on the Internet.

This year (2006) the General Assembly changed this section again, via SEA 379, to eliminate, effective July 1, 2006, any requirement that printed copies be distributed to depository libraries.

Parallel changes also were made in 2005 and 2006 regarding the publication of the Indiana Administrative Code.

With these remaining restrictions gone, the Legislative Services Agency (LSA) announced that "Under HEA 1135 (P.L.215-2005), after July 1, 2006, the Indiana Register will be published only on the Internet and on a more frequent basis."

But the LSA in fact has gone much further, by announcing that it is eliminating, despite the still-remaining requirement of the law that the "publisher shall publish a serial publication with the name Indiana Register," any pretext of a serial, or a paginated, publication.

In response, the ILB has published several entries pointing to the fact that, after nearly 30 years, the June 1, 2006 issue of the Indiana Register is to be the last paginated issue of that document. From now on, the LSA will simply post documents online (including proposed and final rulemaking documents, agency notices, etc.) as they are submitted by agencies such as the Department of Environmental Management, the Department of Insurance, the Department of Revenue, etc. Even now, details remain sketchy and uncertain, but the LSA is plunging ahead. [For previous ILB entries on this topic, check these: first entry, second, third, fourth, fifth.]

This is an enormous step backward for the State of Indiana and its citizens. A concerned law librarian has furnished me with the result of her recent survey of the status of administrative register publishing for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Currently:

The law librarian concludes:
Since the federal government and all states except two still publish a hardcopy or electronic register in a volume/page citable format [ILB: which is what I consider "serial" to mean], I strongly feel that Indiana should continue the time-tested method in current use. An electronic register that could be downloaded as a full document published either monthly, weekly or every two weeks could substitute for the paper copies.
No one that I have contacted is totally opposed to an online-only version of the Indiana Register, so long as it remains in a paginated publication format. What concerns everyone who uses the rules in a hands-on manner, however, is this sudden swerving off in a direction different both from Indiana's past and from the systematized methodologies followed by practically every other state, plus the federal government.

[Much more coming later today in Part II.]

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 14, 2006 10:24 AM
Posted to Indiana Law