The scene is a ritual at the New York State Capitol, which is awash in paper. Even though legislators are enacting fewer laws, they are printing up a storm — 19 million pages every two years, including the full text of all bills, published in type so small, and language so dense, that few could read or understand them.
Now, though, voters will have a chance to move the Legislature into the current century.
In June, after years of inaction even as other states moved to reduce legislative paper consumption, New York lawmakers gave their final approval to a measure that would allow the Legislature to publish bills electronically, rather than on paper.
However, nothing in Albany is ever simple. An obscure provision in the State Constitution requires that bills “shall have been printed and upon the desks of the members” for three days before a vote can be taken. So delivering bills to lawmakers on tablets or laptop computers, as it turns out, requires a constitutional amendment, which the Legislature will put before voters on the statewide ballot next year.
