The 2009 regular session of the Alabama Legislature adjourned May 15. According to the summary report on the Legislature’s Web site, lawmakers considered more than 1,600 bills, plus a large number of resolutions. More than 400 bills were enacted into law.
Most laws enacted each year apply statewide. These “general” acts are added into the Code of Alabama, which organizes the laws into sections by subject. The annotated version has historical information and legal interpretations. The code is updated annually and is widely available, allowing citizens and their officials to know what the law says.
The 2009 Legislature wrote 239 general acts, representing 58 percent of the bills enacted into law during the session. The other 42 percent (174) were “local” acts, which apply only to a specific county or locality. These laws will be added into a county-by-county section at the end of the code but not integrated with it.
Thousands of local acts adopted before 1978 are not in the code at all. These are the hidden acts of the Legislature, published only in the session law book.
Imagine you want to see a particular local act for your county, and you find it was adopted in 1945. Where will you find that year’s session law book? If you learn of a related 1965 act, then you will have to find that law book, too. What if the state attorney general has interpreted this law or a court has voided it? You’ll have to do your own research.
Limits on local legislation were written into the Alabama Constitution of 1901, but the Legislature immediately set about undoing them through local amendments. Today the general rules of the constitution and the code apply fully, partially or not at all in a given county and the Legislature defers to each county’s members in writing local acts. The process lacks both transparency and accountability.
Would Alabama have better local government if the Legislature spent 100 percent of its time writing and overseeing general laws, including the basic rules for county structure and procedures, rather than delving into local matters? I, for one, think so.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jim Williams is executive director for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama.
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