Normalizing Topologically Minimal Surfaces I: Global to Local Index

We show that in any triangulated 3-manifold, every index n topologically minimal surface can be transformed to a surface which has local indices (as computed in each tetrahedron) that sum to at most n. This generalizes classical theorems of Kneser and Haken, and more recent theorems of Rubinstein and Stocking, and is the first step in a program to show that every topologically minimal surface has a normal form with respect to any triangulation.