“Doing it this way was so different and daunting at first,” said the Senate clerk, Carol Taniguchi. “Now it really seems to be a way of life.”

Before the project, paper was king at the Capitol, as it is in many legislatures nationwide.

Each piece of written testimony from the public was copied countless times and distributed to legislators, who often took a quick look at the documents before tossing them into the recycling bin. Tall stacks of multicolored bills dwarfed lawmakers trying to cast votes in the waning hours of each year’s session.

Senate staff members spent hours collating documents by hand and sorting them into folders.

“It was brutal. Sometimes it was hot and you’d be sweating,” said Kamakana Kaimuloa, a clerk for the Senate Committee on Higher Education. “It wasn’t fun.”

That was all put to an end when Senate leadership issued an order: no more paper unless absolutely necessary.

The public would be given documents on CDs instead of on paper. Bills, testimony and committee reports were put online. The Senate bought laptops, document-reading software licenses and wireless Internet, at a cost of $100,000. Employees told legislators and the public alike that they would have to use their own printers if they wanted paper copies.