

The Bunker of Bills


The Bunker of Bills -- The Assembly Document Room

No, it’s not Area 51. It’s not Ft. Knox and it’s not some Cold War-era bomb shelter. It’s the “Bunker of Bills” also known as the Assembly Document Room (there are two actually, one in the Legislative Office Building and another in the Capitol — and that’s just for the Assembly).

As you can see, the room contains thousands upon thousands of bills piled in little cubbies just waiting for someone…anyone…to ask for a copy. Besides the cost to print all these bills, consider how many taxpayer dollars have been spent to special order all those storage cabinets.

Inside the “Bunker of Bills” you won’t find an original copy of the Magna Carta, Jimmy Hoffa or even the Lost Ark but you could discover every proposal for a tax and fee increase you can imagine.  Convinced yet that it’s time for NYS to go digital?

Categories: General
Jim Tedisco -- Member New York State Assembly

9 Responses

  1. Don Draper says:

    Makes me wonder how many of bills in that room are for the goofy license plates for bikes bill.

  2. David P. says:

    It’s nice to see an idea from the Assembly that not only saves some money but also saves some trees. New York is getting a bit greener!

  3. A. says:

    First of all, do you really need to keep ALL of those? They didn’t pass for a reason, right?

    In theory, it seems like a good idea. However, in my short working life, I’ve learned a few things about government operations. If you were to go “digital” with those bills, people would say that the Assembly would need to hire staff to scan the bills to an electronic filing system. Say, as a very conservative estimate, 5 temporary workers are hired at what seems to be the going rate of $13.50/hr for one year. That would mean the temp service was taking in about $18.50/hr for one year? That would cost over $192,000 for one year if the temps didn’t work any overtime. Now, could said temps, plus whatever additional existing staff allocated to the project complete this job in one year? Somehow, I don’t see it happening. Additionally, you have to remember that you will still need staff available to photocopy these bills while people are doing the scanning, so you will still be spending money on paper and ink and staff to do that for a while.

    With the hiring of additional staff comes the need for new equipment to do the job. Surely, someone from the Assembly would suggest that new scanners were purchased to do the job. They’d have to be fast, efficient scanners, too…we’d have to finish the job as soon as possible, after all. But, scan to what? Would you have to pay an outside firm to establish a file repository system or help your IT team admisiter it? How much would this cost? Would your existing IT staff have to allocate overtime hours for the project? Would you need new servers and equipment to hold the additional data? Would you need new IT staff to manage the additional electronic file space? I don’t know how that works.

    What if, when trying to find $$ within the budget, someone says, “Hey…why do we still have these temps here scanning while we’re still copying bills? This is costing us way more than ever. When will it end?” So, the project may then be abandoned for a while. If someone ever decides to pick it up again, they probably won’t know where the people who started the project left off…so, they’d probably have to start over again…This last part seems far fetched, but unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen…

    I guess spening $600,000 or more for a couple of years to save a few hundred thousand every year in the next few years would be worthwhile…Too bad the ARRA funds are going away, because this project has ARRA written all over it…

  4. The Funky Chicken says:

    Hummmmm it has to make you wonder if someone at the top is profiting from not going digital. I mean think about it, the paper, the machines, and the contracts associated with both, etc …… and let’s not forget the $$$. Could it be graft??

  5. Brick says:

    Does someone have a fixation with the feel and smell of paper?? If not, then there is no excuse for not going digital.. Wait, even if they did, there is still no excuse!!! It’s time for New Yorker’s to take back their state!!!!

  6. Betty says:

    Is this something that would be just for the Assembly or would it work statewide?

  7. Jim Tedisco says:

    A. The bills are already online so nothing would need to be scanned and no additional staff would need to be hired.

  8. Jim Tedisco says:

    Betty, the picture above is of one of the Assembly’s Document rooms but my proposal is for both houses of the legislature. Stop the automatic printing of bills, digests, reports etc. We’ve also asked Gov. Cuomo to look at having state agencies and authorities go paperless to save taxpayers money.

  9. A. says:

    If the bills are 100% online already for everyone to access, then they should toss that paper ASAP.

    I do understand that some people can read things more easily when they are on paper, and they may not want to take the time and effort to print things out, but we need to save money where we can. There are things that can be done to your computer to aid in reading documents.

    If you try to convince agencies to follow suit, though, you are definitely looking at the scanning/extra staff/extra equipment route. It would be nice if someone would just say as of X date, A B C needs to be kept electronically and all existing documents should stay as is for now. I don’t think we should be hiring staff to convert things. Short run jobs and money in people’s pockets is nice, but it doesn’t help agencies get used to the idea that they need to utilize current staff as efficiently as possible. I wish the days of hiring people for unnecessary projects and “holding” funding were over. Where else can someone hire a person who will have almost no job responsibilities just so they can keep a certain incoming cash flow to their organization?