HB0493_S_Cmte_Amend

SECTION 1. Section 19-7-25, Mississippi Code of 1972, is amended as follows:

19-7-25. (1) The board of supervisors of each county shall provide and have placed in the courtroom of the courthouse a suitable bookcase, with doors and lock, of sufficient capacity to hold not less than two hundred law books, in which the Mississippi Reports, digests thereof, statutes of the state, and other books belonging or furnished to the county, shall be kept * * *,. The board of supervisors shall purchase any volume of * * * ~~said~~ the reports, digests and statutes which may be lost or destroyed, and shall have bound all of such books as need to be rebound for preservation, all of which shall be paid for out of the county treasury. Additional bookcases shall be furnished when necessary.

(2) In addition to the board of supervisors maintaining printed books or physical books as described under subsection (1) of this section, the board of supervisors may also maintain such books in an electronic format.

SECTION 2. Section 19-25-65, Mississippi Code of 1972, is amended as follows:

19-25-65. (1) (a) The sheriff shall be the custodian of the books other than record books belonging to the county, and he shall keep the Mississippi Department Reports, census reports, statutes of the state, the "Mississippi Reports," digests, and legislative journals assigned to his county in a suitable and safe bookcase in the courtroom of the courthouse. He shall keep them well bound in leather, or stiff boards with leather back and corners, to be paid for out of the county treasury on the order of the board of supervisors, and he shall preserve them in good condition.

(b) In addition to the sheriff maintaining printed books or physical books as described under paragraph (a) of this subsection, on the order of the board of supervisors, such books may also be maintained in an electronic format.

(2) * * *He The sheriff shall be fined Ten Dollars ($10.00) by the court, either circuit or chancery, as for a contempt, for each volume belonging to the county and which has passed into his custody that shall be out of the courtroom at any term of court. He shall also receive and preserve in the same way all books of every kind, maps, charts, and other like things that may be donated to the county by the state, the United States, from individuals or other sources. He shall not permit any of the books in his keeping to be carried out of the courthouse.

(3) The sheriff shall, in case of binding or rebinding of books belonging to the county, cause the statutes of the state to be labeled "Laws of Mississippi," and the year of their enactment shall appear thereon. If the reports and digests or code are rebound, they shall be labeled as they were originally.

(4) In his settlement with the clerk of the board of supervisors for the month of December of each calendar year, the sheriff shall file with the * * *~~said~~ clerk a sworn itemized statement of the volumes of the Mississippi Reports on hand in the county library on the last business day of * * *~~said~~ the month, and for all volumes missing since the settlement for the previous December the clerk shall debit the * * *~~said~~ sheriff in his * * *~~said~~ settlement at the rate of Four Dollars ($4.00) for each of * * *~~said~~ the missing volumes.

SECTION 3. Section 19-7-31, Mississippi Code of 1972, is amended as follows:

19-7-31. (1) (a) The board of supervisors of each county in the state shall have power, by an appropriate order or orders on its minutes, to establish and maintain in the county courthouse or other suitable public building adjacent or near thereto, a public county law library under such rules, regulations and supervision as it may from time to time ordain and establish, and to that end, the board may accept gifts, grants, donations or bequests of money, furniture, fixtures, books, documents, maps, plats or other property suitable for that purpose.

(b) The board of supervisors shall have power to exchange or sell duplicate volumes or sets of any such books or furniture, and in case of sale, to invest the proceeds in other suitable books or furniture. The board may also purchase or lease from time to time additional books, furniture, or equipment for the public law library.

(2) For the purpose of providing suitable quarters for the public law library, the board of supervisors may, in its discretion, expend such sums as may be deemed necessary or proper for that purpose, and may also employ a suitable person as librarian and pay the law librarian such salary as the board, in its discretion, may determine. The board may employ additional librarians or other employees on either a part-time or full-time basis and may pay these additional employees as the board, in its discretion, may determine. The board of supervisors, in their discretion, may contract with the county or municipal library for any staff or facilities as they deem necessary for the overall management and operation of the county law library. The board of supervisors may contract with the State Law Library for law library services that may be offered by the State Law Library.

(3) * * *~~In case~~ If the public law library is * * *so established, all books, documents, furniture and other property then belonging to the county library, as provided for in Section 19-7-25, shall be transferred to and become part of the public law library, and all books, documents and publications donated by the state to the county library shall also become a part of the public law library. In that case, Sections 19-7-25 and 19-25-65, relating to the county library, shall be superseded in that county for as long as the public law library is maintained in the county.

(4) The board of supervisors of any * * *~~such~~ county that establishes a public law library, in its discretion, may levy, by way of resolution, additional court costs not exceeding Two Dollars and Fifty Cents ($2.50) per case for each case, both civil and criminal, filed in the chancery, circuit and county courts or any of these in the county, and may levy, by way of resolution, additional court costs not exceeding One Dollar and Fifty Cents ($1.50) per case for each case, both civil and criminal, filed in the justice courts of the county, for the support of the library authorized in the county. If the additional court costs authorized in this section are levied, the clerk or judge of those courts shall collect those costs for all cases filed in his court and forward same to the chancery clerk, who shall deposit the same in a special account in a county depository for support and maintenance of the library, and the chancery clerk shall be accountable for those funds. However, no such levy shall be made against any cause of action the purpose of which is to commit any person with mental illness, or alcoholic or narcotic * * *~~addit~~ addiction to any institution for custodial or medical care, and no such tax shall be collected under this subsection on any cause of action that the proper clerk handling same deems to be in its very nature charitable and in which cause the clerk has not collected his own legal fees.

(5) To accomplish the purposes of this section, the board of supervisors may enter into such arrangement or arrangements with the county bar association of any such county as may seem advisable for the care and operation of the law library, and the board may receive and consider, from time to time, such recommendations as the bar association may deem appropriate regarding the library.

(6) The board of supervisors of each county in which there are two (2) judicial districts, in its discretion, may maintain a law library in each judicial district. In those counties the board, in its discretion, may pay from the county general fund or from the special fund authorized in this section all the costs authorized in this section, provided that the board shall not spend in each judicial district less than the amount of the special court costs authorized in this section and collected in each such district.

(7) The governing authorities of any municipality, in their discretion, by resolution duly adopted and entered on their official minutes, may levy additional court costs not exceeding One Dollar and Fifty Cents ($1.50) per case for each conviction in the municipal court of the municipality, for the support and maintenance of the county law library in the county within which the municipality is located. The additional costs shall be collected by the clerk of the court, forwarded to the chancery clerk of the county for deposit in a special account in the county depository, and expended for support and maintenance of the county law library in the same manner and in accordance with the same procedure as provided for costs similarly collected in the chancery, circuit, county and justice courts of the county.

SECTION 4. Section 1-1-11, Mississippi Code of 1972, is amended as follows:

1-1-11. (1) Except as provided in subsection (2) of this section, the Joint Committee on Compilation, Revision and Publication of Legislation shall distribute or provide for the distribution of the sets of the compilation of the Mississippi Code of 1972 purchased by the state as follows:

Fifty-seven (57) sets to the Mississippi House of Representatives and forty (40) sets to the Mississippi Senate for the use of the Legislative Reference Bureau, Legislative Services Offices, staffs and committees thereof.

Ten (10) sets to the Governor's Office; nine (9) sets to the Secretary of State; and twenty (20) sets to the Auditor's Office.

One (1) set to each of the following: the Lieutenant Governor; each member of the Legislature; the Treasurer; each district attorney; each county attorney; each judge of the Court of Appeals and each judge of the Supreme, circuit, chancery, county, * * * ~~family,~~ justice and municipal courts; each Mississippi Senator and Mississippi Representative in Congress; State Superintendent of Education; Director of the Department of Finance and Administration; * * * the Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce; each Mississippi Transportation Commissioner; * * * the Insurance Commissioner; the Clerk of the Supreme Court; the State Board of Health; each circuit clerk; each chancery clerk in the state for the use of the chancery clerk and the board of supervisors; each sheriff in the state for the use of his office and the county officers; and each county for the county library (and an additional set shall be given to each circuit clerk, chancery clerk, sheriff and county library in counties having two (2) judicial districts).

Six (6) sets to the Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) Committee; three (3) sets to the Director of the Legislative Budget Office; six (6) sets to the Department of Corrections; two (2) sets to the Department of Archives and History; two (2) sets to the State Soil and Water Conservation Commission; sixty-eight (68) sets to the Attorney General's office; six (6) sets to the Public Service Commission; four (4) sets to the Public Utilities Staff; thirty-five (35) sets to the Department of Revenue; one (1) set to the Board of Tax Appeals; two (2) sets to the State Personnel Board; six (6) sets to the State Law Library; one (1) set to the Library of Congress; ten (10) sets to the University of Mississippi Law School; one (1) set each to the Mississippi School for the Deaf and the Mississippi School for the Blind; one (1) set each to the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, University of Southern Mississippi, Delta State University, Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi Valley State University, and the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning; and one (1) set to the Supreme Court judges' conference room. In furtherance of the State Library's reciprocal program of code exchange with libraries of the several states, the joint committee shall, at the direction and only upon the written request of the State Librarian, distribute or provide for the distribution of sets of the code to such libraries.

One (1) set to each state junior or community college; three (3) sets to the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks; two (2) sets to the Department of Environmental Quality; two (2) sets to the Department of Marine Resources; two (2) sets to the Mississippi Ethics Commission; six (6) sets to the Mississippi Workers' Compensation Commission; four (4) sets to the State Department of Rehabilitation Services; and seven (7) sets to the Department of Human Services. One (1) set to each of the following: State Textbook Procurement Commission; University Medical Center; State Library Commission; Department of Agriculture and Commerce; Forestry Commission; and seventeen (17) sets to the Department of Public Safety. Also, one (1) set to each of the following: Adjutant General, Mississippi Development Authority, Department of Banking and Consumer Finance, Bureau of Building, Grounds and Real Property Management, the State Educational Finance Commission, the Mississippi Board of Vocational and Technical Education, Division of Medicaid, State Board of Mental Health, and Department of Youth Services.

The joint committee is authorized to distribute or provide for the distribution of additional sets of the Mississippi Code, not to exceed three (3) sets, to the office of each district attorney for the use of his assistants.

The joint committee shall provide to the Mississippi House of Representatives and the Mississippi Senate the annual supplements to the Mississippi Code of 1972 for each set of the code maintained by the House and Senate.

* * *

An elected or appointed officeholder in the State of Mississippi, except for a member of the Legislature, shall deliver to his successor in office, or to the joint committee if there is no successor, the set of the Mississippi Code of 1972 provided the officeholder under this section.

Before the joint committee delivers or provides for delivery of a copy of the Mississippi Code of 1972 to an individual officeholder, the joint committee shall prepare and submit a written agreement to the officeholder. The agreement shall, among other provisions, state that the code is the property of the State of Mississippi, that it shall be transferred to the officeholder's successor in office, that the officeholder has an obligation to make such transfer and that the officeholder shall be responsible for the failure to deliver the code and for any damage or destruction to the code, normal wear and tear excepted. The joint committee shall execute the agreement and forward it to the officeholder for execution. The joint committee shall not deliver or provide for delivery of the code to the officeholder until the executed agreement is received by the committee. The joint committee may include in the agreement such other provisions as it may deem reasonable and necessary. In addition to damages or any other remedy for not transferring a set of the code to his successor, an officeholder who does not transfer his set of the code shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon conviction, pay a fine of One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00). Upon request of the joint committee, the Attorney General shall assist the joint committee in taking such actions as necessary to require an officeholder to transfer the set of code provided under this section to his successor, or to the joint committee if there is no successor, and to recover reimbursement or damages from any officeholder for the loss of or damage or destruction to any volumes of the set of the code provided under this section, other than normal wear and tear.

Replacement of missing, damaged or destroyed sets or volumes of the code provided by this chapter may be obtained from the code publisher through the joint committee at the established state cost, the cost to be borne by the recipient.

No more than one (1) set of the Mississippi Code of 1972 shall be furnished to any one (1) individual, regardless of the office or offices he may hold.

(2) * * * The sets of actual bound volumes of the Mississippi Code of 1972 * * *

~~(b)~~ referenced in subsection (1) shall be provided to each elected state official, elected state district official and member of the Legislature * * * upon written request by the official or member of the Legislature * * * ~~makes a request in writing~~ to the Joint Committee on Compilation, Revision and Publication of Legislation * * *.

SECTION 5. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2020.