Internet Offers Access to a Basement Full of Bills

For many years, Californians who wanted a copy of a legislative bill had to see Bessie Glover, a cheerful fixture behind an obscure counter in the state Capitol basement.

“I’ve been here so long people think I’m part of the archives,” Glover said, declining to confide exactly how long that has been.

For about as long as anyone can remember, Glover and her fellow clerks have been handing out paper copies of bills to citizens, lobbyists, bureaucrats, gadflies, reporters and others who navigate two flights of stairs and two passageways to find the windowless office known simply as the “bill room.”

This has been the routine since 1911, when the Legislature created a bill “filing room” for itself and the public. Those who wanted to track their laws-in-the-making had to come to Sacramento to get them--limit one copy per citizen per visit.

There are no plans to close the bill room. Many still find comfort in its paper world. But in what has been hailed as a revolutionary advance for democracy, citizens now access state bills and laws from their dens and living rooms via the Internet.

And to an unprecedented degree, state records indicate, Californians appear to be devouring state legislative information online.

Only a mouse click away, citizen Web surfers can learn of a possible tax increase heading their way, or whether a bill ordering free water and air at service stations has suffered a setback.

Officials say that there is no way of identifying who visits legislative Web sites by the electronic “hits” they leave behind. However, the volume of electronic visits has been increasing steadily.

At the Web site operated by the state Legislative Counsel Bureau, www.leginfo.ca.gov, where the public can access everything from a single bill to the entire Motor Vehicle Code, hits have soared.

Jeffery Deland, chief deputy legislative counsel, said during the final two weeks of December 1998--when the Legislature was in recess--the bureau’s site recorded more than 1.3 million hits.

Hits reached more than 4.2 million last month as the Senate and Assembly dealt with hundreds of bills during the stretch drive before the 1999 session adjourned.

“There has been a relatively steady increase during the year,” Deland said, with spikes in June and July as the governor and lawmakers made their decisions on the state budget and other issues.

Since 1993, when a law written by then-Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) thrust legislative documents and records from the Capitol basement to vastly greater exposure on the Internet, citizens have received at least next-day access on what their Legislature is up to.

The law requires the legislative counsel bureau to post a wide range of documents, including daily agendas and the full text of bills and their amendments. Both houses sponsor their own home pages and easily accessed links to related sites, including the home pages of individual legislators.

Web sites include the Assembly at www.assembly.ca.gov, the Senate at www.sen.ca.gov, legislative budget analyst at www.lao.ca.gov, state auditor at www.bsa.ca.gov and the official California Home Page at www.ca.gov/s/governor.

The legislative Internet revolution is not limited to California.

The National Conference of State Legislatures lists 52 legislative sites of varying sophistication, including one in Puerto Rico. The expansion and development of legislative Web sites, said Pam Greenberg, the organization’s specialist on legislative information technology, “is just hand in hand with the growth of the Internet.”

She noted that California, cradle of the Internet movement, is more advanced than other states. One feature enables an online user to “subscribe” to a bill and automatically receive updated versions when it is amended. “Not every state offers that,” she said.

Likewise, the California Assembly and Senate Web pages offer limited capabilities for listening online to live committee hearings and floor sessions.

But if typical Californians in their homes, classrooms or at their work sites can better understand what their Legislature is doing by accessing information electronically, it is probably the corps of Sacramento lobbyists that benefits most.

Traditionally, lobbyists and their employees trekked a couple of blocks each morning to the bill room to pick up their bills and examine them line by line for surprises or hostile amendments. Many lobbyists still do, but the online access gives them another source of information in a sometimes cutthroat environment where information is power.

“There are systems of weaponry and you want to be fully armed,” said Barry Brokaw, president of Sacramento Advocates, whose client list includes road builders, oil refiners, talent agents, farmers and Wal-Mart stores.

Brokaw and fellow lobbyist Cliff Berg of Governmental Advocates, who represents interests ranging from health care professionals to online service providers, say that they still rely chiefly on their own networks of personal contacts for information, including other lobbyists and legislators, and the bill room, of course.

But as a second- or third-level source, Brokaw and Berg said, they turn to the legislative Web sites. Online access enables him to “set up neat little electronic files without having to set up a Manila folder,” Brokaw said.

Still, each morning he examines paper bills and amendments from the bill room because they may arrive sooner than the information is posted on the Web sites.

“There is a comfort level with being able to hold something that looks like a bill,” he said.

Brokaw’s other information systems include cable TV from the Legislature, “squawk boxes” connected to the Capitol, his telephone and “my own listening” in the statehouse corridors.

Berg also subscribes to a bill service that tracks and bundles legislation of interest to his clients. Even so, he said, “I use [the legislative Web sites] 10 times a day, at least.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Unprecedented Access

A revolution in Democracy is happening on the Internet. Information regarding matters pending before Legislature has been available to Californians in printed form since 1849. That same information is now available on the World Wide Web.

What Legislative Information Is Available?

California Law requires that for each current legislative session, the following information be made available on the Internet:

* The Legislative Calendar

* The schedule of legislative committee hearings

* A list of matters pending on the floors of both houses of the Legislature

* A list of the committees of the Legislature and their members

* The text of each bill introduced, including each amended, enrolled, and chaptered form of each bill

* The history of each bill introduced and amended

* The status of each bill introduced and amended

* All bill analyses prepared by legislative committees in connection with each bill

* Any veto message concerning a bill

* The California Codes

* The California Constitution

* All statutes enacted on or after January 1, 1993

Tracking a Bill on the Web

Step 1: Call up the website:

For Official California Legislative Information: https://www.leginfo.ca.gov

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Step 2: Select the “Bill Information” button

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Step 3: Conduct your search. Some tips:

* If you do not know the house of origin for the bill, entering the bill number and selecting both will return a list of all measures with that bill number from both houses.

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* If you do not know the bill number, you may search for bills by keyword(s), author(s), or both keyword(s) and author(s).

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* For keyword(s) searching: type the word(s) in the space provided. The system will return a list of all the bills that contain all the entered keyword(s).

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* For author(s) searching: type the last name of the Legislator in the space provided. If there is more than one Assembly Member or Senator with the same last name, type both the first and last name. The system will return a list of all the bills authored by the Legislator.

* For both author(s) and keyword(s) searching: type the keyword(s) and author in the space provided. The system will return a list of all the bills authored by the Legislator that contain all the entered keyword(s).

Other websites: State Assembly: https://www.assembly.ca.gov

State Senate: https://www.sen.ca.gov

Governor’s Office: https:// ca.gov/s/governor