Legislature Leaps Into Laptop Computer Age : Capitol: With such a device at each desk in chambers, lawmakers will have volumes of data at their fingertips.

The California Senate, where tradition retreats only grudgingly, is about to surrender to that trendy symbol of the Cyber Age, the laptop computer.

New laptops known as “think pads” are expected to greet the members when the senior chamber of the Legislature convenes Dec. 5 to organize its 1995 legislative session.

“We’re trying to modernize,” said first-term Senate leader Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), a self-described computer nerd who has gently phased in a series of efficiency reforms.

The laptops are designed to enable members to accomplish at their Gold Rush-era, hand-carved desks virtually everything they could do during the Paper Age, except vote. Lockyer said that as the transition occurs over the next few months, written bills, amendments and other printed documents gradually will be abolished.

With a simple tap on the screen, senators will be able to call up the text of a bill, an analysis of its contents, its history, previous votes and amendments. The same volume of information now consumes tons of paper and many dollars in printing costs.

“All the information will be in the computer,” Lockyer said. He expects members to embrace the change.

The senators will have to attend a computer class for operating instructions, but the break-in period is expected to go smoothly. “We tried to come up with something that is idiot-proof,” said a legislative technician.

Both the Senate and the Assembly have maintained computerized information systems for several years. But arrival of the laptops will, for the first time, put computers in the hands of decision-makers during critical floor sessions.

The Assembly also plans to shift from paper to member-operated laptop computers Dec. 5, but the change there is viewed more as a logical evolution than a revolution.

For decades, the 80-member Assembly has used an electronic tote board to instantly record votes cast from push buttons at members’ desks. Assembly members also have had access to high-tech kiosks in the chamber to check on the status of a pending bill or a roll-call vote.

Historically, change is slower in the Senate. Tradition dictates, for example, that men, including visitors, must wear a coat and tie during floor sessions--even during Sacramento’s scorching summers. The Assembly abolished the dress code years ago.

Likewise, members of the Senate formally address one another with the honorific title “senator.” In the laid-back Assembly, first names are commonly used, even during the angriest of debates.

However antiquated, one Senate tradition is not soon to be tampered with: the time-consuming vote by voice roll call, in which all 40 senators’ names are read aloud, whether or not the member is present.

Lockyer and fellow computer enthusiast Sen. Bill Leonard of Big Bear, chairman of the Republican caucus, agree that while calling the roll may be a tedious and inefficient throwback to low tech, it is important to preserve.

They say verbal roll calls provide for a mature decorum not found in the Assembly, where members commonly violate the rules by “ghost voting” for their friends or race en masse to their desks in order to vote.

“I saw the abuses in the Assembly,” recalls Leonard, a former assemblyman. “In the Senate, I don’t have to dive over to my desk to vote. In the Assembly, it is like constantly running through the airport and dodging people to push the button.”

Lockyer said the methodical, name-by-name roll calls in the Senate give members time to analyze how their colleagues are voting and make their own tactical decisions.

“If there is a purpose to a tradition that makes current sense, there is no reason to change it just because there is an electronic gizmo at hand,” Lockyer said.

Total cost of the laptop project, including wiring the chamber and software purchases, is estimated at about $1.5 million, according to Cliff Berg and Bob Connelly, chief staff officers of the Senate and Assembly rules committees respectively.

They said each laptop, purchased from IBM for the Senate and from NEC for the Assembly, cost about $7,000. They acknowledged that the price appears high but said the equipment will contain a huge memory and other “high-end” special-order features that will make them compatible with the Legislature’s existing computer system.

“Obviously, we would have liked to buy (a discount-store) model for $999,” Berg said. “But to handle the Legislature’s current computer system, you have to have a very high memory capacity.”