28-8-105. Duties of director and staff; prefiling bills; fiscal notes.

(a) It shall be the duty of the director and staff to perform the following specific functions, together with such other functions as the council may prescribe:

(i) Provide information during the legislative session and interim periods for any legislative, interim or standing committee or individual legislator;

(ii) Provide for and use an automated bill-drafting system;

(iii) Aid any legislator in drafting bills, resolutions or amendments prior to a general election, or aid any person who will be a member of the next session of the legislature in drafting or prefiling legislative bills, resolutions, or amendments, when the legislator aids and assists in the drafting and in the case of prefiling agrees to sponsor the bill, resolution or amendment. The management council may limit at its discretion, the number of bills that any legislator or person may have drafted or prefiled, but there shall be no limit applied to any standing or interim committee;

(iv) Keep a record of all expenditures of the legislature, and keep a correct inventory and act as custodian of all legislative supplies and property;

(v) Compile such laws of the state of Wyoming as are designated by the management council. In preparing copy for printing any revision or compilation of laws, deletions of obsolete or fully executed date references and corrections in punctuation, spelling, grammatical construction, section numbers or headings may be made provided such deletions and corrections do not alter the meaning;

(vi) Serve, or designate a qualified staff attorney to serve, as a member of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.

(b) Bills or files, resolutions or memorials may be prefiled by any person who will be a member of the next session of the legislature after the general election and prior to the convening of a regular session of the legislature. They shall be submitted to the director in such form as is in accordance with the most recent rules and practices. Each submittal shall bear the signature of the authorized person submitting it and shall be approved as to form by the director. A bill, file, resolution, or memorial is prefiled when written approval by the sponsor is received by the legislative service office. Promptly upon receipt of the draft of the bill or file, resolution or memorial to be prefiled, the office shall:

(i) Cause each item to be placed in proper form with the use of the automated bill-drafting system and printed in sufficient quantity for use at the next session;

(ii) Maintain and deliver to the chief clerk of the appropriate house of the legislature immediately after such officer has been duly qualified, each item of proposed legislation, prefiled bill, file, resolution or memorial;

(iii) Forward to each requesting legislator and legislator-elect of the pending legislative session printed copies of each item of prefiled legislation, resolution and memorial so prefiled.

(c) The management council may negotiate with any responsible publisher for revising, compiling, editing, preparing, printing, publishing, selling and distributing any designated revision, compilation, session laws, journals or digests and may accept bids from such publishers and award contracts for the preparation and printing of such publications, to the bidder most nearly meeting the requirements of the council.

(d) The legislative service office shall provide fiscal notes for all proposed legislation having a fiscal impact, indicating fiscal and personnel impact and revenue generated or required by the proposed legislation, in such form and under such conditions as specified by joint rule of the legislature. Fiscal notes shall only quantify impact at the state level but shall also reflect any changes to the total amount of revenue distributed from the state to local governments under a statutory formula. Fiscal notes shall be submitted to the sponsor of the bill for review and approval prior to attachment to the bill.