BUDGET STANDOFF HAS GOVERNOR HITTING THE BOOKS.(Main)

Byline: Dan Janison Capitol bureau

Twice this week, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo did something unusual. He strode into the state Capitol's legislative library, selected legal books on the room's back shelves, and started reading.

At one point, he even tried to get the hang of the photocopying machine, witnesses said, for some of the material he'd found in McKinney's, a compendium of state laws and thumbnail descriptions of court decisions involving those laws.

Nobody in Cuomo's office would explain the visits. When asked about the impromptu trips to the law books, Elizabeth Moore, Cuomo's chief counsel, smiled and said only, "He's a lawyer."

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