The state office responsible for putting together legislation was hit with a cyberattack late Tuesday — throwing a wrench in the budget process, The Post has learned.
Capitol officials confirmed that the Legislative Bill Drafting Commission — responsible for drafting and publishing the bills that will make up the fiscal year 2025 spending plan — remained crippled by the hack on Wednesday morning.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget office and lawmakers were trying to figure out temporary workarounds, the sources said.
It was not immediately clear who may have launched the attack, what data may have been compromised or the extent of damage affecting the commission.
“The bill drafting system has been down since early this morning. They are working to correct the issue as soon as possible. They can still process work for the houses and we don’t believe this will delay the overall process,” a spokesperson for state Senate Democrats said.
The office had begun publishing some of the less controversial of the 10 individual bills that make up the budget Tuesday night when the cyberattack happened, according to the sources.
Until a few years ago, state law required that legislators have physical printed copies of proposed bills in order to vote on them.
While that requirement has since been scrapped, the commission is responsible for putting bills in their final standard format and uploading them into centralized software for lawmakers and the public to access them.
Options being considered to work around the hack include reviving the old practice of physically printing the bills, the sources said.
