There is hereby created a Legislative Reference Service of the State of Alabama.

(a) For the purposes of this section, 'joint legislative operations' means those activities, responsibilities, and procedures of the Legislature as an institution of government including, but not limited to, activities, responsibilities, and procedures involving the enactment and codification of legislation, the process by which administrative regulations are adopted, relations with the other branches of government, and internal operations of the Legislature as a whole including, but not limited to, joint rules, legislative compensation, and joint activities of the two houses. The term does not include activities, responsibilities, or procedures involving only one house of the Legislature, such as matters relating to the rules, liabilities, or employees of the particular house.

(b) In addition to the reporting requirement in Section 36-15-21.1, whenever litigation required to be reported under Section 36-15-21.1 concerns joint legislative operations, the state official who is a party to the litigation shall promptly notify the Chair of the Legislative Council and the Director of the Legislative Reference Service.

(a) The Code Commissioner shall prepare an official recompilation of the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, as amended. This official recompilation may not make any substantive change to any existing operative constitutional provision.

(b) The official recompilation shall include all of the following:

(1) The removal of all expressly repealed sections or amendments, or portions thereof.

(2) The insertion of expressly identified amendatory language contained in a particular constitutional amendment into the identified location and the deletion of the language being amended and replaced; and the retention of the original article and section number or amendment number.

(3) The relocation of various constitutional amendments applicable to the entire state in the appropriate article of the constitution based upon a logical sequence and the particular subject or topic.

(4) The grouping of various constitutional amendments applicable to the entire state in the same location in the document based upon a logical sequence and the particular subject or topic.

(5) The grouping of local constitutional amendments in the same location in the document based upon a particular subject or topic or by county.

(6) The elimination of constitutional provisions or amendments, including portions of such provisions or amendments, that have lapsed or have been invalidated, directly or indirectly, by decision of a court of last resort.

(7) The inclusion, after the text of a relocated provision, of the official constitutional amendment number assigned to that provision at the time of ratification.

(8) Other editorial changes necessary to accurately reflect the current status of the constitution in a logical manner.

(c) The Code Commissioner, upon completion, shall instruct the official Code Publisher to publish the official recompilation.

(d) The recompiled constitution published under this section shall be known as and cited as the Official Recompilation of the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, as amended.

(e) In the event of a conflict between the official recompilation published under this section and the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, or any amendments to the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, or the amendments thereto, or both, shall prevail over the official recompilation. In the event of a conflict between the official recompilation published under this section and the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, or any amendments to the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, or the amendments thereto, or both, shall prevail over the official recompilation.

The Legislative Reference Service shall be under the supervision, direction, and control of an officer designated as the Director of the Legislative Reference Service. The director shall be appointed by the Legislative Council provided for in Chapter 6 of this title at a salary determined by the Legislative Council, payable as the salaries of other state employees.

(a) The Director of the Legislative Reference Service may hire, either subject to the State Merit System Law or without regard to the provisions thereof, staff members and clerical help necessary to effect the purposes of this chapter.

(b) The compensation due to the officers and employees employed under this section shall be certified by the Director of the Legislative Reference Service to the Comptroller, who shall issue his or her warrant therefor.

(a) Any person employed by the Legislative Reference Service as a legislative analyst or in any similar position in the classified service of the state shall be compensated at a rate at least equal to the rates fixed for attorneys in comparable ranks in the classified service.

(b) The Personnel Board or other authority charged with the duty of fixing the compensation scale for state employees shall provide that the pay scale for Legislative Analysts I shall begin at a minimum at least equal to the minimum then prescribed for Attorneys I and that likewise each intermediate rate in the salary range, and the maximum rate, shall be equal to or greater than the corresponding rate for Attorneys I. In like manner, the board or other authority shall also prescribe the minimum, intermediate, and maximum salary rates for Legislative Analysts II, III, and IV at a rate at least equal to the minimum, intermediate, and maximum salary rates prescribed for Attorneys II, III, and IV, respectively.

(a) The Director of the Legislative Reference Service shall have all of the following powers and duties:

(1) To respond to questions concerning the organization and administration of state government or the operation of constitutional or statutory law.

(2) To render assistance in the drafting of bills and amendments to bills.

(3) To make studies and reports on problems of state and local government in Alabama, either upon request or on his or her own initiative.

(4) To conduct a continuous analysis of the scope, effect, and methods of federal, state, and local government operations in Alabama and make those recommendations to the Legislative Council as he or she determines to be appropriate.

(5) To prepare, when directed by the Legislature, a compilation or code of the statutes of Alabama.

(6) To act as Code Commissioner in determining the content of the code and any supplements thereto and to prepare an annual codification bill to adopt changes to the code enacted at prior sessions of the Legislature.

(7) To enter into a printing contract on behalf of the State of Alabama, when approved and directed by the Legislative Council, to publish the official code of the statutes of Alabama.

(8) To perform any other tasks related to service to the Legislature of Alabama as may be required by the Legislative Council.

(b) Requests for assistance under subdivisions (1) and (3) of subsection (a) shall be prepared only for a member of the Legislature or the Lieutenant Governor, or a person authorized by a member of the Legislature or the Lieutenant Governor. Requests for assistance under subdivision (2) of subsection (a) shall be prepared only for a member of the Legislature, the Lieutenant Governor, or the Governor, or a person authorized by a member of the Legislature, the Lieutenant Governor, or the Governor. A request for assistance made by a member of the Legislative Council or a person authorized by a member of the Legislative Council shall be given priority over any other request. A request for assistance made by a member of the Legislature or a person authorized by a member of the Legislature shall be given priority over any other requests other than by members of the Legislative Council. The director may respond to other requests for assistance, including, but not limited to, requests from other state governments, as he or she determines to be in the best interests of the state.

(c)(1) Communications concerning a request for assistance between the director and each officer and employee of the Legislative Reference Service and an individual authorized by this section to make a request for assistance shall be privileged and confidential. When responding to a request for assistance, the director and each officer and employee of the Legislative Reference Service shall maintain this privilege. All requests for assistance and the contents thereof, including, but not limited to, the fact a request was made, any materials related to the request, and any work product related to or arising from the request, shall be confidential and privileged until this privilege is waived. The privilege is waived when the Legislative Reference Service receives instructions to release the material from the member of the Legislature in whose name the request for assistance was made, or the Lieutenant Governor for a request for assistance made in the name of the Lieutenant Governor, or the Governor for a request for assistance made in the name of the Governor.

(2) The introduction of a bill prepared by the Legislative Reference Service is a waiver of the privilege imposed by this subsection only with respect to the contents of the bill.

(3) The advertising of a local bill by synopsis or in a form less than in its entirety is not, in and of itself, a waiver of the privilege for the purposes of this subsection.

(d) In order that the purposes of this chapter shall be best served, each department and agency of State of Alabama government shall furnish to the Legislative Reference Service copies of all monthly, quarterly, annual, biennial, quadrennial, and other regular reports which it is required by law to prepare for other agents or officials of the state government and copies of all printed publications that it issues. Each department or agency of State of Alabama government shall comply with requests for supplementary reports made by the Legislative Reference Service and approved by the Legislative Council. Each department and agency of State of Alabama government shall make its internal records available to the Legislative Reference Service upon request.

This chapter shall be liberally construed.

(a) The Code Commissioner for the Code of Alabama 1975, in compiling the contents of the code and any cumulative supplement and replacement volume to the code, may not alter the sense, meaning, or effect of any act. The Code Commissioner, in compiling the contents of the code and any supplement and replacement volume to the code, may perform all of the following editorial functions:

(1) Change the wording of descriptive headings and catchlines.

(2) Change hierarchy units as specified in an act to appropriate code hierarchy.

(3) Change reference numbers to conform with renumbered hierarchy units, or make corrections in reference numbers if the correction can be made without substantive change in the law.

(4) Substitute the proper hierarchy unit for the terms 'this act,' 'the preceding section,' and the like.

(5) Remove language that is surplusage, including 'of the Code of Alabama 1975,' 'of this section,' and the like when such language follows a designated hierarchy unit.

(6) Substitute 'this title,' 'this chapter,' or other hierarchy designation in place of reference to the specific unit, if the reference is within that unit.

(7) Translate dates to the appropriate month, day, and year.

(8) Change words when directed by law.

(9) Substitute the name of any agency, officer, or instrumentality of the state or of a political subdivision whose name is changed by law or to which powers, duties, and responsibilities have been transferred by law, for the name which the agency, officer, or instrumentality previously used or of the agency which was previously vested with the same powers and charged with the same duties and responsibilities.

(10) Divide, consolidate, and rearrange hierarchy units and parts of hierarchy units.

(11) If any section or part of a section of the Code of Alabama 1975 is amended by more than one act at the same session of the Legislature, incorporate into one or more code sections the section as amended or altered by the several acts, if each of the amendments, changes, or alterations are not in substantive conflict and can be given effect and incorporated in the code section or code sections in a manner which will make the code section or code sections intelligible.

(12) Resolve nonsubstantive conflicts between multiple acts.

(13) Change capitalization, spelling, and punctuation for the purpose of uniformity and consistency.

(14) Correct manifest grammatical, clerical, and typographical errors, including, but not limited to, by means of the addition or deletion of language.

(b)(1) Upon the adoption and incorporation of the annual cumulative supplement and each replacement volume into the Code of Alabama by statute, that supplement or replacement volume shall be considered as part of the entire Code of Alabama and shall be considered for statutory construction purposes in the same manner as all other portions of the code.

(2) This adoption and incorporation by statute shall constitute a continuous systematic codification of the entire Code of Alabama 1975 for purposes of Section 85 of the Constitution of Alabama of 1901. Such a statute is a law that adopts a code for the purposes of Section 45 of the Constitution of Alabama of 1901.

(c) The Legislature finds and declares that this section is declaratory of, and does not constitute a change in, the law existing since the amendment of Section 29-7-6 by Act 93-618 of the 1993 Regular Session designating the Director of the Legislative Reference Service as the Code Commissioner.

(a) Whenever any provision of this code contains a preprinted form that contains language which indicates the year of application or execution as '19__,' the language shall be deemed to mean either a year beginning with the numbers 19 or 2 as the case may be.

(b) The Code Commissioner, when and as deemed appropriate, shall implement editorial changes to such language to conform the preprinted form to the applicable date.