The Tennessee General Assembly passes thousands of acts and resolutions during each year’s legislative session. Now these historical documents are available online at the Secretary of State’s web site.
The text of acts and published resolutions has been online in recent years, but this is the first year that images of the actual records are available to the public. Additionally, the publications division of the Secretary of State’s Office will be posting all acts and resolutions, rather than just the acts and resolutions that are required by law to be published.
Acts and resolutions are passed by the legislature, signed by the governor and then printed in the legislative clerk’s office. Then the Secretary’s publications division publishes and files these bills to ensure that the public will have access to them. The acts and resolutions are preserved and stored at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
“Making all of the acts and resolutions from the legislature available online is another important step in government transparency,” said Secretary of State Tre Hargett. “I appreciate the work our publications division is doing to post these acts quickly and I know these documents will be great resources for legislative researchers now and in the future.”
With new technology, the publications division makes approved bills available to the public at http://www.tn.gov/sos/acts/index.htm as soon as they are received from the General Assembly.
“We are glad to have the advanced technology that makes acts available to Tennesseans the day they are received,” said Richard Arnold, director of the publications division. “We hope this resource will become as valued as the biennial Blue Book we publish.”
Several acts and resolutions passed by the 107th General Assembly are already posted on the web site and more will be posted as they become available.
For questions about the online posting of acts and resolutions, contact Richard Arnold, at 615-741-2650 or e-mail Richard.Arnold@tn.gov.