Senate Bill 2630

(COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE)

AN ACT TO AMEND SECTION 19-7-31, MISSISSIPPI CODE OF 1972, TO AUTHORIZE COUNTY LAW LIBRARIES TO USE COLLECTED FUNDS FOR TECHNOLOGICAL PURPOSES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES AND ELECTRONIC RECORDS; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:

SECTION 1. 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) If the public law library is 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 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 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.

(8) Funds collected under this section may also be used for electronic and technological purposes related to the law library, including, but not limited to, computers, hardware, software, internet, online subscription services, legal research tools and electronic records.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2021.