NEW JERSEY LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION FOR THE INTERNET : BULLETIN NO.1
March 3, 1994
Attached is the text of a bill endorsed by the New Jersey Law
Librarians Association, to make New Jersey statutes and legislative
bills available on the Internet without usage fees. Also attached
is an explanatory statement.
The draft bill has been submitted to the Chairmen of the Senate and
Assembly State Government Committees. Further bulletins will be
issued to inform you of the bill number and progress of the bill,
and to suggest actions in support of its enactment.
Meanwhile, we invite comments, advice, and encouragement.
--Paul Axel-Lute, Rutgers-Newark Law Library
axellute@andromeda.rutgers.edu
D R A F T
---------
An ACT providing for public access to legislative information in
electronic form, and supplementing P.L. 1979, c.8.
BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State
of New Jersey:
1. P.L. 1979, c.8 is supplemented by adding after section 13
thereof (C. 52:11-66) the following new section:
[C. 52:11-66.1]
(a) The Office of Legislative Services shall make available to
the public in electronic form the following information:
(i) the most current available compilation of the
general, permanent, public New Jersey Statutes;
(ii) the texts of all bills introduced in the current
Legislature, including all amended versions, all introductory and
committee statements, all fiscal notes, and all veto messages;
(iii) bill indexing data on all bills in the current
Legislature, including access by subject, by sponsor, and, to the
extent feasible, by statutory section affected;
(iv) bill tracking data on all bills in the current
Legislature, including history of actions and current status;
(v) the current calendar of legislative events, including
the schedule of legislative committee hearings and a list of bills
scheduled for legislative action;
(vi) a current directory of the Legislature, including
complete committee membership information;
(vii) the texts of all enacted laws beginning with the
laws of 1994;
(viii) such other information as the Legislative Services
Commission shall direct.
(b) The information specified in subsection (a) shall be made
available to the public by way of the largest nonproprietary
cooperative public computer network.
(c) No fee or usage charge shall be imposed as a condition of
accessing the information specified in subsection (a) by way of the
network specified in subsection (b).
(d) The Office of Legislative Services may offer a fee-based
electronic legislative information service which may include, in
addition to the information specified in subsection (a), the
following information and capabilities:
(i) the ability for users to maintain automatically
updated private databases and receive automatic notification of
scheduled action on specific bills or subject matter;
(ii) the ability for users to retrieve information by
various means of searching full text;
(iii) archives of bill texts and related information from
prior Legislatures.
(e) Nothing in this law shall be construed to prohibit
nongovernmental individuals or entities from using the information
specified in subsection (a) to provide, either commercially or on
a voluntary basis, services similar to those provided by the Office
of Legislative Services pursuant to subsection (d).
2. This act shall take effect at the beginning of the 1996
session of the Legislature.
EXPLANATORY STATEMENT on
bill for public access to electronic legislative information
The bill has two purposes: (1) to make the most current
version of the statutory law as widely available as possible,
fulfilling the government's obligation to promulgate the law so
that it can be obeyed; and (2) to facilitate democratic government
by making the texts of pending bills readily available to the
public for feedback to the Legislature.
The states of California, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Utah
presently offer full-text legislative information via the Internet
without usage fees.
The Office of Legislative Services presently operates an
Electronic Legislative Information System, designed primarily for
the use of the Legislature itself, but also available to non-
governmental subscribers for $55 per month ($25/month for
additional users at same site) plus 75 cents per connect minute.
This system includes the "New Jersey Permanent Statutes Database"
(a very current compilation of the statutory law); texts of all
bills in the current Legislature, with status information and
subject-heading access; the Legislative Calendar; committee
membership information; and a "Private Databases Program" enabling
automatic tracking of particular bills or subjects.
The bill is partly modeled on California Government Code
section 10248 (added by 1993 Statutes chapter 1235). It would
require OLS to make the statutes, bill texts, bill tracking
information, legislative calendar and committee membership
information available on the Internet without access charges.
The bill would allow OLS to continue to provide a fee-based
service with added-value components, including the Private
Databases Program, full-text word searching, and archives of bill
texts from previous Legislatures. OLS would not, however, have a
monopoly on the provision of such service.
Revenue from non-governmental subscribers to the OLS system is
estimated at $120,000 per year. The cost of maintaining the
exterior connection is estimated at less than $10,000 per year.
For a worst-case scenario for the fiscal impact of this bill,
assume complete loss of the external revenue, and a doubling of the
exterior connection cost. This would mean an additional amount of
$140,000 per year to be covered by general tax revenue---about four
cents per year from each of New Jersey's approximately 3.5 million
taxpayers. (There would also be an initial cost for additional
equipment, on the order of $10,000.)
New Jersey executive departments also pay OLS for use of the
legislative system, at the reduced rate of 45 cents per connect
minute. Presumably, OLS would lose much of this internal revenue,
as departments find it cheaper to access the information through
the Internet. There could therefore be budgetary adjustments
lowering the departmental budgets and correspondingly increasing
the OLS budget, with zero net fiscal effect.
--- Paul Axel-Lute rev.3/2/94
Paul Axel-Lute Rutgers Law Library tel.(201) 648-5977 or -5964
Collection Dev't 15 Washington St. axellute@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Librarian Newark NJ 07102 USA
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