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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Between 1920 and 1940, the General Assembly of Indiana through resolution or act authorized no less than twenty-four special interim studies of legislative problems. In addition to these, the governor on eight different occasions set up commissions to study and report on matters of legislative concern. Diligent search has failed to disclose any evidence of activity on the part of a fourth of these commissions, but the others turned in reports averaging one hundred pages in length and at an average cost of $4,000.
1 This cost figure is probably much too low. Usually no appropriation would be made to a commission, and if it spent money it was from the governor's contingent fund or other similar source. Only through an examination of all the vouchers for such funds could one discover all the expenditures. The writer, while employed by a commission, was permitted on one occasion to hire two persons to be placed on the payroll of a regular department.
2 Eight of the studies authorized could not be found.
3 See Jaffin, George H. “Prologue to Nomostatistics,” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 35, p. 1 (1935).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 The first study, made in 1917, was authorized by Governor Samuel M. Ralston, who responded to an appeal from the state board of charities. Ten counties were surveyed. After the 1917 legislature had appropriated $10,000 to continue the work, the committee was reappointed by Governor Goodrich. Eight additional counties were surveyed and the second report, published March 6, 1919, was distributed widely, not only in Indiana but in most of the other states of the Union. The committee was continued by Governor McCray. The legislature appropriated $1,000 at the special session in 1920 and $10,000 at the regular 1921 session.
5 Cost, respectively: (1) $5,810.81; (2) $4,034.22; (3) $1,106.42; (4) $342.49.
6 Copies are available of one Tax Study made prior to 1920. It was authorized by Ch. 114, Senate Bill 342, Sixty-ninth General Assembly, 1915.
7 The Corporations Survey Commission has been in continuous existence since its creation in 1927, having been continued by concurrent resolution in 1929, and again in 1935, for the purpose of preparing and submitting amendments to existing laws governing corporations in Indiana.
8 The General Corporation Act of 1929 was modeled after the draft of an act submitted the same year by the Corporations Survey Commission, and the bill proposed after extended research by the Survey Commission of Financial Institutions became the new Financial Institutions Law of 1933.
9 A few examples will suffice. The recommendations of the Child Welfare Commission of 1920 were, in the main, enacted into law the following year; the conclusions of the Committees on Mental Defectives from 1916 to 1922 embody the principal modifications of legislative policy with respect to the feeble-minded and the insane; the teacher licensing law of 1923 followed the suggestions of the General Education Survey Committee of that year; most of the recommendations contained in the Report of the Observance and Enforcement of Law in 1931 were enacted piecemeal in 1931, 1933, and 1935; the observations of the Special Tax Study Commission of 1935 were to a considerable extent reflected in the 1937 amendment of the Gross Income Tax Law; a portion of the Report of the Highway Survey Commission of 1936 became the Vehicle Highway Account Act of 1937; the 1939 General Assembly acted on two of the recommendations of the Committee on Child Welfare which published its report the previous year; and the recommendations of the Liquor Study Commission in 1939 were in a large measure followed in the amendments to the Alcoholic Beverages Act passed in that year.
10 The cost of the study of Governmental Economy, for example, would have been several times $5,576.53 if all the members had been paid for their services. The listed expenditure of the Study Commission for Indiana Financial Institutions would not have paid for the paper the report was printed on. When the Indiana Education Survey was made in 1923, professional services “valued at $35,000.00” were a donation of the General Education Board. Funds, clerical workers, and special tabulations often have been supplied by various operating departments. Printing costs, moreover, are paid out of the general printing fund. From the point of view of cost-accounting, it is thus impossible to determine the cost of most of the studies or to make a satisfactory comparison with the cost, for example, of a legislative council.
11 In the case of eight studies, the cost could not be ascertained without running thousands of contingent-fund vouchers.
12 The Report of the Corporations Survey Commission, 1929, and The Report of the Survey Commission for Indiana Financial Institutions, 1932.
13 It also may be noteworthy that the Corporations Survey Commission, which did produce in 1929 a virtual code of corporation law, has, as noted above, had a continuous existence since its inception in 1927, occupying a unique position as a kind of legislative council, but concerned only with the laws pertaining to corporations.
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