Wednesday, April 15, 1998 | 10:03 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Two years ago, the Legislature embarked on a high-tech experiment and bought every lawmaker a $6,000 laptop computer that was supposed to last four years.
However, a legislative committee decided Tuesday to discard the old computers and lease faster, lighter and more sophisticated laptops for the 1999 legislative session.
"We have to make sure we have the best tools so they (legislators) can do their jobs," said Assemblyman Jack Close, R-Las Vegas, chairman of the legislative committee on computer application.
In hindsight, Close said it probably would have been better to lease the computers two years ago instead of buying them. But the present units, which are now second hand, will be sold off to state agencies.
The Legislature will then direct the state purchasing division to buy new models, which will be leased for about $70 a month for each lawmaker. Close said that would be a big savings over leasing or purchasing from a private company.
Ron Nichols, manager of information systems for the Legislature, said the major complaints legislators have with the present laptops are that they are too slow, too heavy, the screen is hard to read and the battery life is too short.
"The good news is these laptops meet the computing needs of many state agencies and therefore can be fully utilized outside the Legislature for the remainder of their expected useful life," he said.
Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, said the present units weigh just under 14 pounds. "They're pretty heavy when you're packing around other things such as a brief case," he said.
Coffin also suggested that the touch screens could be eliminated on the new laptops because he and other legislators didn't use the feature.
A survey showed that 37 of the 47 lawmakers who responded used their computer during the session but many are not using the technology during the off-session.
Close said the new models could be leased from state purchasing for the expected four-month session in 1999. If a lawmaker didn't want a unit after the session, it could be turned in and sent to another state agency.
This hand-me-down practice has been in effect for a number of years. The Legislature leases new computers for its secretarial staff during the session and then sells them to state agencies.
The committee also gave Nichols permission to go ahead with designing a new subscription service for information to be available over the Internet during the 1999 session. Information concerning bills, agendas and other legislative items is now available at no charge.
Nichols will provide a "bill tracking service" to keep up to date on where a bill is. Instead of going through 600 bills, the subscriber will be able to find out where his or her bill currently is located. In addition there will be an e-mail sent to the subscriber when there's a change in status of the bill.
For tracking 20 bills or less, the charge would be $20 per month. For more than that it would be $50 a month.
The committee delayed a vote on spending $52,000 to create a system whereby Las Vegas television stations would be able to interview lawmakers from the "Blue Room" in the building.
Coffin expressed reservation about this plan saying he favored a system whereby the meetings of the Legislature and its committees could be filmed and sent to Clark County to be shown on television news stations.
A signal is now broadcast from the legislative building to the Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas. Nichols said the picture was not broadcast quality and the television stations did not want to put in the equipment to transfer it from the Sawyer building to their stations.
But the interview program, he said, would be broadcast quality sent via satellite. A 15-minute segment over the satellite would cost $500 to $700.
The state Department of Information Technology is developing a microwave system which the Legislature will be able to use in 2001 for televising hearings of broadcast quality to Southern Nevada.
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