The School Law That Existed Only in the Enrolled Bill

Here is another 'legal elephant,' as State Superintendent of Schools Bryan puts it. Treasurer Cole of Spokane County received $3,700 from County Clerk Armstrong as moneys collected by fines, etc. Superintendent Turner, of the public schools of Spokane, requested the treasurer to place it to the credit of the school fund, but the law on that point not being perfectly clear, Treasurer Cole refused to do so until the matter was cleared up. Superintendent Turner wrote to Mr. Bryan asking his advice, and the latter has referred the matter to Attorney-General Jones. Mr. Bryan in his letter to Turner says:

The discrepancies which you refer to between the statutes of 1891 and the school laws of that session, as amended by chapter 127, had not been called to my attention, and were not known to exist. I have hunted the matter up from first to last, and I find the case to be a very peculiar one. In the first place the language which you refer to, found in chapter 127, laws of 1891, did not appear in the original bill. By reference to the senate journal it is found to have been inserted upon motion of Senator Dyer, and the history of the bill shows it to have passed the senate in that way. By reference to the house journal it will be found that the clause 'Unless otherwise provided' was stricken out by the house committee on education, and that the report of the committee was adopted. The bill then passed the house in this shape, as shown by the house journal, and was returned to the senate for concurrence. The senate journal shows that the house amendments were concurred in, so that the bill became a law in exactly the same shape in which it passed the house. Yet in direct contradiction of the senate journal the enrolled bill contains that clause just as it comes—the strangest part of the whole matter. When the bill had passed the senate I went to the enrolling and engrossing clerk (Judge McClinton) and got him to have me a certified copy of the bill made, for which I paid one of his clerks either $3 or $3.50, in order that I might keep perfectly posted as to the condition of the bill. This copy I took to the office of the secretary of state, and in company with his chief clerk, Mr. Davis, I compared it with the enrolled bill. We read it entirely through by the enrolled bill and did not discover the discrepancy. My copy then went to the state printer, and from it the school laws were printed and read by copy. The clause in question is omitted in the school laws, and the history of the bill as shown by the journals of the two branches of the legislature shows that it should be omitted, yet it appears in the enrolled bill now on file in the office of the secretary of state. It raises a peculiar question. Will the enrolled bill stand as the law, in face of the history of the bill, with which it does not agree? I shall refer the matter to the attorney general for his opinion and will inform you as to what it is as soon as possible.