ALBANY – If a governor signs a bill in a forest and no one hears about it, does it still become law?

Such a question could be asked about Governor Pataki, who routinely waits weeks or even months after taking action on legislation before announcing his decisions to the public.

Under the assumption that Mr. Pataki in mid-July signed a law regulating kosher products, grocery stores and food manufacturers are preparing to comply with the law. However, the governor has not formally put the law on the books or issued any official notification to the industry even though the rules are due to take effect in January.

The same goes for a statute barring life insurance companies from discriminating against customers based on their travels to Israel and other foreign countries. The industry believes Mr. Pataki signed the bill in mid-August, and most companies removed travel questions from their application forms as of last month. But so far the industry has received only informal guidance from officials at the state Insurance Department, according to the executive vice president of the Life Insurance Council of New York, Diane Stuto.

Another bill in legal limbo authorizes the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to use former parkland to expand its South Ferry subway station. Mr. Pataki probably signed the legislation almost three months ago; he has yet to broadcast the news to the thousands of Staten Island commuters who use the station every day.

As of yesterday, Mr. Pataki hadn’t disclosed his decisions on 75 bills, some of which passed the deadline for action in June.

These delays by the governor represent a relatively new quirk in the folkways of the state Capitol, which, in a study from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, was recently described as the most dysfunctional in the nation. Lobbyists said previous governors would delay their announcements no more than a week or 10 days, while Mr. Pataki is currently five months over due on some bills.

Critics said Mr. Pataki appears to be using the delays to control the timing of news stories about his actions. For a popular bill, he may want to schedule a ceremonial bill-signing. For a controversial one, he might want to postpone the announcement until a time when the public is distracted. This past Friday, three days after legislative elections, Mr. Pataki announced his actions on 134 bills – including 10 vetoes – most of which he had actually decided on October 5.

“It’s all about managing public relations,” said the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, Blair Horner. “It’s not about behaving openly with the public. … There’s no excuse for it. The governor should tell the public when he’s acted on a bill. It should be public information when it happens.”

“In our mind, it’s disrespectful to the public and to the Legislature that they don’t report their actions in a timely manner,” said a spokeswoman for the Assembly Democrats, Eileen Larrabee.

A spokesman for Mr. Pataki, Kevin Quinn, acknowledged that the governor’s office doesn’t always announce its decisions right away, but denied deliberately concealing information for political reasons.

“At this point in the year we get hit with a lot of bills coming down from the Legislature,” Mr. Quinn said. “We tend to send them up in groups. … I don’t think this is any different than what has happened in years past.”

He said legislators, reporters, and affected interest groups can always learn the status of a bill by contacting the governor’s office.

Assemblyman Jack McEneny of Albany, however, tells a different story. As the sponsor of legislation to establish a convention center at the state capital, Mr. McEneny, a Democrat, called the governor’s office in September to learn whether the bills had been signed. As of yesterday, he had received no response.

“It’s an incredibly inefficient way to run an organization,” Mr. McEneny said. “They go into the great gubernatorial limbo and stay there. We’ve never had a problem like this before.”

Under constitutional rules, Mr. Pataki must either sign or veto a bill within 10 days after formally receiving it from the Legislature, not counting Sundays and holidays. If he takes no action, the bill automatically becomes law. As a practical matter, if the Legislature has not received a veto message within the prescribed 10 days, the legislation will take effect one way or another. But it’s up to the governor to assign the bill a chapter number, which formally adds it to the laws of the state, and to notify the public.

“When the governor vetoes a bill, he lets us know,” said a spokesman for the majority Republicans in the Senate, Mark Hansen. “Obviously, if we do not see that it has been vetoed, then we assume and know that it has been signed into law.”

Insiders who are familiar with these rules, and who know how to use the legislative database, can usually deduce the fate of a particular bill. But the citizens and businesses who must comply with the laws often remain unaware.

“Advocates who are not plugged into the Albany scene, and don’t have paid lobbyists, they don’t know what’s happening,” Mr. Horner said.