Now Online, Legislature Goes Further

Promptly at 2 a.m. every weekday, millions of words and numbers flow out of the California Legislature’s databanks and into the public domain, retrievable for immediate perusal by anyone with basic computer gear.

No other state offers as much legislative information--bill texts, analysis, amendments, vote tallies--to that unique electronic window on the world, the Internet.

In America, “we’re numero uno,” said Bill Behnk, the state technician in charge of the Legislature’s massive data transfer.

But now lawmakers are treating the Internet as more than just a high-tech receptacle of their official handiwork. As never before, they are fashioning a broad spectrum of proposed laws for and against regulation of the Internet’s awesome capability to reach the public, with its pictures, its words, its many uses for good or bad, its allure to those who would tax it.

About 40 bills have been introduced this year addressing Internet concerns, some widely divergent in their aims, many reflective of a society struggling with a myriad of social implications posed by a runaway, so-far unfettered technology.

Making the debate especially weighty in California is the perceived need to guard the state’s huge computer industry against overzealous Internet intrusion by government.

Silicon Valley legislators, regardless of party, have been especially protective, notably with proposed legislation to head off any attempt to slap new taxes on Internet service providers.

Several measures aim to make the Internet a wider source of public information, from government, from hospitals, from schools and from politicians. In the latter arena, renewed efforts are underway that would require political campaigns to file financial reports electronically.

Some well-intentioned legislation, however, may be headed for oblivion, even if enacted. Bills requiring state agencies to post more and more data on the Internet could overwhelm computer systems already recording high failure rates, technical officials warn.

It was just three years ago that it was learned that the Department of Motor Vehicles had to scrap a $50-million computer system. A similar fate appears to be looming over a statewide system for tracking parents who fail to pay child support.

Foremost among current concerns is a quandary plaguing computer operations at almost all levels of state government and in systems worldwide: solving the so-called year 2000 problem, in which older computer systems can’t process dates beyond the end of 1999.

In state government, 1,600 computer systems have the year 2000 problem, according to Ron Ridderbusch, chief deputy director of the Department of Information Technology.

Until the laborious, time-consuming year 2000 repair jobs are completed in at least 192 state offices and departments, at a cost of $187 million and rising, there will be little opportunity to respond to legislative desires for increasing government activity on the Internet, Ridderbusch said.

Another debate underway in Sacramento, as in millions of computer-equipped households, involves the propriety of the Internet’s content.

High on that agenda is the debate over online sex and risks to children.

But as it happens, the clearest clash of wills in the Legislature occurred this year over the use and abuse of the Internet as a medium for gambling.

State Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno)--always on the lookout for new revenue for California’s sagging horse racing industry--introduced a bill that would allow Internet bettors to make wagers on races at California tracks.

In spirit, at least, almost the exact opposite is a measure by Sen. Tim Leslie (R-Carnelian Bay) that would make it illegal to use the Internet to gamble in a wide array of otherwise illegal casino games.

Both bills are stalled for now but could come back next year. Leslie, for one, vows to press on.

“Just because it’s gambling on the Internet, should it suddenly be sanctioned?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t the government be able to control on the Internet what it can and does control in other mediums?”

The proposition that the Internet should be held to the same legal standards as any other medium, despite the inherent barriers to monitor for compliance, also is used when it comes to sex.

A bill by Assemblyman Steven T. Kuykendall (R-Rancho Palos Verdes) would make it illegal to use the Internet, as it is now illegal in other ways, to lure minors into sexual liaisons. Under his bill, sending messages or material by e-mail to anyone under 18 with seduction as the intent could land the sender in jail or prison.

The bill contains protections for other Internet activities. It would not affect legitimate sex education material, for example. His aim, Kuykendall said, is simply to go after online “pedophiles.”

According to industry executives, software has been developed and is being further refined to allow parents to control Internet content for sex and violence.

Similar to the V-chip technology for television, parental control of Internet content has the backing of President Clinton as well as many in the computer-related industry.

Ken Wasch, president of the trade protection group Software Publishers Assn., noted with satisfaction that “nobody has made any progress in censoring the Internet.” His industry, however, supports “empowering parents” to determine what children see and read online, he said.

Last month, in its ruling declaring unconstitutional a federal law banning the sending of “indecent” material across the Internet, the U.S. Supreme Court was said to have struck a blow for freedom in cyberspace. At the same time, traditional values groups complained that smut-peddling had won the day.

In Sacramento, authors of Internet regulation measures reevaluated their bills in light of the decision.

A seemingly innocuous bill by Assemblyman Bill Campbell (R-Villa Park) became “all the more important,” said Campbell’s chief of staff, Robert Becker, after the high court decision.

Gov. Pete Wilson last week signed Campbell’s bill into law. As of next year, it requires school districts to adopt specific policies of their choice for dealing with the surreptitious viewing of Internet pornography by students, considered an inevitable side effect of equipping classes with online computers.

“If the vilest of pornography” is likely to reach students, Campbell said, there should be awareness of the problem with a policy of notifying parents and teachers of the risk.

School districts could, under Campbell’s bill, state a policy of screening out objectionable material, he said, a possibility that caused the American Civil Liberties Union to oppose the measure.

What makes any foray into regulating the Internet troublesome, said Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), are the unintended consequences.

Software designed to screen out sexual references, she said, might well delete text in which the word “breast” appears, “and then you’d be preventing teenagers from doing research on breast cancer.”

In any event, said Bowen, “most porno sites require payment, and it seems to me that’s a better piece of software [to block viewing] than anything you could design.”

Bowen, whose pioneer lawmaking led to providing the public with Internet access to the Legislature three years ago, says her next goal is a wider, more consolidated marshaling of state government information for public use.

She has introduced a bill this year to post on the Internet all state data in the public domain. Beyond that--once state computers are up to the task--she envisions the electronic organizing of government documents for new, practical benefits.

With the logical “layering” of government data from different sources, Bowen said, home buyers could check prospective property for quake faults and flood plains and view area crime statistics by visiting a single World Wide Web site.

Several legislators boast cyber-savvy credentials like Bowen’s. But, mirroring a population in which some choose to ignore the culture of computers altogether, four senators and four assemblymen in the online Legislature work in chambers with no computer terminal on their desks, despite easy touch-screen controls.

One of them is veteran lawmaker Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco).

Says he, echoing a childhood spent in less techno-oriented times: When it comes to communicating, “gimme a Dixie cup and a piece of string.”