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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Ind. Law - More issues with the General Assembly's website

The Acts of Indiana. Recently the General Assembly posted the PDF files for the Acts of 2008 on its website. That would be a good thing, except for two problems.

The first is that the file is very large (16M), so I'd advise downloading it rather than trying to open it online.

The second is that when it posted the link for the Acts of 2008, the General Assembly removed the link for the Acts of 2007. This despite the urging of myself and many others that the files for ALL the volumes of the Acts of Indiana be made available to the public. (I've been urging this for five years; obviously to no effect.)

The worst part of this is, the PDF files for the Acts of Indiana for six years -- 2002 through 2007 -- are all still there online, but they are inaccessible because the General Assembly has eliminated the links!

The Indiana Code. Although nearly every law passed earlier this year by the General Assembly took effect July 1, if not earlier, the online Indiana Code has not been updated to reflect the 2008 General Assembly's actions.

I've written that the online Indiana Code may not be relied on as the official version, that the online Indiana Code has errors, and that many provisions of the Indiana statute law that are in effect are not included in the Indiana Code.

Even so, for the majority of Indiana's citizens, including many lawyers, the online Code is unfortunately all there is.

But the online Indiana Code, which should have been updated at the very latest, by July 1st, sets out the law as it existed on July 1, 2007..

BTW, if you go to the online Indiana Code, as I did this afternoon, you will see this note:

The Indiana Code has been updated to reflect changes made by the 2007 General Assembly and HEA 1010 from the 2008 Session of the General Assembly.
Okay, what is "HEA 1010 from the 2008 Session"? It is the property tax bill that was passed in November 2007. It took effect Nov. 21, 2007, except for SEC. 8, which took effective retroactively to Jan. 1, 2007, and SEC. 9, whch took effect retroactively to July 1, 2007. It is now referenced as PL 1-2008.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 13, 2008 05:37 PM
Posted to Indiana Law