Brought before legislators to explain a six-week backlog of business filings in her office, Secretary of State Debra Bowen offered this week a small window into state operations.  It was not, as Assemblyman Tom Daly, D-Anaheim, said afterwards, encouraging.

Speaking before Daly's Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 4 on State Administration, Bowen, also a Democrat, described an office that processes hundreds of thousands of critical business documents using a filing system reliant on three-by-five index cards.

She explained how the her agency's Sacramento office building, constructed in 1995, has "maxed out" on available electrical outlets and how the state's tortured procurement process virtually ensures that whatever software she orders will be obsolete by the time it's delivered.

Read more at the OC Register