The Legislature took a major step toward a “paperless chamber” this week, a move hailed by some as a saver of time, money, and paper but criticized by at least one lawmaker as a waste of scant resources.
As of this week, all 153 members of the House of Representatives, including the two tribal representatives, have access to a new computer system hatched last session by House Speaker Glenn Cummings and approved by the Legislative Council.
The new system – for Legislators only – allows instant access to bills, amendments, committee reports, and fiscal notes the moment they are released from the Office of the Revisor of Statutes.
It also includes, among other features, a note-taking function that attaches Legislators’ notes to the relevant documents, an instant messaging system that reduces the need for hand-delivered notes between Legislators and a digital version of the House calendar that will be updated in real time.
The Senate is not involved in this project, though House Clerk Millicent MacFarland said there is interest in including the Senate in the future.
The system, which is still in the testing phase, will cost up to $150,000 to install, including the cost of a software contract, two printers and scanners that convert paper copies of documents into digital files.
MacFarland said funding came from end-of-year surpluses in accounts for postage and phone lines. The contract for the service is with a Virginia firm called International Roll Call Corp., which already does business with the state in several areas.
“For $150,000, this is a good piece of software,” MacFarland said.
The Legislature’s printing costs are considerable. During the two years of the 123rd Legislature, which ended in December, the state spent $685,810 to print bills, amendments and calendars. The majority of those copies went to Legislators and state staff; anyone outside the State House who wants documents, pays a fee to cover costs. MacFarland said she has been notified of an impending 9 percent increase in printing expenses.
A key benefit of the new system, aside from the purported savings, is that it will make the Legislature more efficient by cutting the amount of time spent waiting for amendments to come back from the printers.
This problem becomes especially prevalent near the end of each session as work on bills becomes more frenzied, said MacFarland.
That’s also when the paper starts to really pile up. In recent years, MacFarland has noticed more and more Legislators posting notices at their desks that they don’t want copies of the numerous handouts that come around. But that certainly doesn’t stand for everyone.
“The reality is that we will never completely banish paper,” MacFarland said. “There are some people who still want paper copies. They will be accommodated.”
House members, who received user names and passwords for the system this week, are expected to use their own computers to access it.
Sen. Carol Weston (R-Montville) who was a member of the Legislative Council last session when this issue was decided, has opposed it from the start.
“I don’t believe the savings are going to be there,” she said. “It didn’t make any sense to be expending any kind of money at a time when we were slashing other people’s funding. For me the most important thing is not setting the bad example of one more time that the state legislative or the executive branch spends a lot of money on a computer system that never realizes its promise.”
Weston also questioned the program’s implementation, which she said already seemed to be happening before it was approved “in unorthodox fashion.”
But MacFarland said everything was done above-board.
“This project was within the resources of the Legislature,” she said. “The speaker of the house has the right to implement policies and procedures he or she deems beneficial.”
Representatives who were asked about the system last week hailed its benefits. One of them was Rep. Les Fossel (R-Alna).
“If you look at the amount of paper we throw out in a day, this is a very good thing,” he said. “The drawback is if the computer-based system breaks down and we’re all just sitting there.”
Rep. Sarah Lewin (R-Eliot) said this is “a good thing to do.”
“I’ll sure be glad to see this happen so we can save printing costs,” she said. “We may need some classes for the older folks, but this will save us a bunch of time and a bunch of money.”
Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree (D-North Haven) shared the enthusiasm, though she echoed Lewin’s thought that some training might be in order. She said Maine lags behind most of the nation in computerizing its legislative process.
“The amount of paper we print for them to look at for a second and then throw away is insane,” she said. “I see this as a cost-saving resource in both money and time. I look forward to a day when we won’t be wasting so much paper and time.”
Dan Walker, a lobbyist for the Maine Press Association, said he sees no problem with the system as long as the public retains access to everything given to lawmakers, in accordance with Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.
“As long as there’s a way for folks to get everything as quickly as the Legislators get it, I don’t see a problem,” Walker said.
MacFarland said she expects the program’s virtues to become quickly evident, though she hesitated to put a dollar figure on how much it might save.
“I’m thinking that within two or three years, this will have paid for itself,” she said.
(Statehouse News Service)
