For years, the Capitol community has jumped into budget season each January with two documents: a lengthy overview of the governor's budget (known as the summary or the "A-pages"), and the actual budget itself, some 1400 pages at last count.

Well, not any longer. In January, Governor Schwarzenegger's budget will be released only on the Internet.

This morning, budget staffers and the web-design company hired to make this all happen sat down with members of the Capitol press corps to show how it will all work. This is the second year of weaning policy wonks off the big print document; last year, only the Budget Summary was published, with a CD-ROM of the entire budget inside the back cover.

The governor's team says the old print versions cost some $600,000 a year. And while the startup of the cyber-budget won't be much cheaper this year (about $450,000), it's estimated that the savings will increase in the next couple of years, cutting the cost by about two-thirds.

The facts were all well and fine with reporters this morning. But most of us simply wanted to know this: will the state website be so overloaded by the public on the day of the budget release that we won't be able to write our stories?

As they say, stay tuned. Some of this will be about whether the technology really works. But other parts of this debate will be about dragging some of us in the news business into a brave new world...