Are the Statutes on this Web Site Official?
The Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) continually updates the Wisconsin Statutes and Annotations on this Web site to reflect the changes made to the current statutes up to the time of the update. The Wisconsin Statutes do not use the word "official" in relation to the publication of statutes and, accordingly, "official" has no legal meaning when applied to this electronic publication of the Wisconsin Statutes and Annotations or to the printed volumes.
The statutes are printed biennially under authority of s.
35.18, and s.
35.18 (2) requires the chief of the LRB to certify for the biennially printed statutes only:
that the bureau has compared each printed section therein with the original section of the statutes, or, as the case may be, with the original section contained in the enrolled act from which the section was derived, together with all amendments of such original section, if any, and that all the sections appear to be correctly printed.
Only printed statutes are accorded the statutory presumption of being prima facie evidence under ss.
889.01 and
990.07. Before legislative acts are incorporated into the printed Wisconsin Statutes and Annotations, only printed acts that have affected a statutory provision are accorded the status of being prima facie evidence of that provision.
The statutes on this Web site are published under ss.
13.92 (2) (k) and
16.971 (6), but there is no statutory authorization for certification of the updated statutes published on this Web site. However, the statutes published on this Web site are produced from the same computer files used to print the volumes, and for each updated version of the statutes published on this Web site, the LRB has made the comparisons required for certification of the printed statutes under s.
35.18 (2).
The Wisconsin Statutes & Annotations presented in PDF format files on this Web site are exact reproductions, both as to content and format, of the LRB computer files used to produce the printed Wisconsin Statutes & Annotations, as updated through the date and act number indicated on this Web site, except budget schedules in s.
20.005. Under s.
20.004 (2), budget schedules are not continuously revised and are updated as noted in s.
20.005.
The HTML and Ebook Wisconsin Statutes & Annotations presented on this Web site are exact reproductions of the content, except for certain tables and graphics as noted in those files, but not the format, of the LRB computer files used to produce the printed Wisconsin Statutes & Annotations, as updated through the date and act number indicated on this Web site.
Although the LRB makes all possible efforts to avoid errors, it cannot guarantee that either the printed statutes or the electronically published statutes contain no errors. In the event of of any discrepancy with any original act of the legislature, s.
990.07 provides that the original act controls.
