CHEYENNE — A package of legislation changing the way local governments publish legal notices received approval Wednesday from a state legislative committee.
The bills reduce the number of times required for some legal notices to be published in newspapers and also incorporates government Web sites to inform the public.
The Joint Interim Committee on Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions will sponsor the bills in the budget session, which convenes in February.
The proposals are the result of more than a year’s study and negotiations between the Wyoming Press Association, the Wyoming Association of Municipalities and the Wyoming Association of County Commissioners.
“It’s a good compromise,” said Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, co-chairman of the committee.
The study included reviewing all state laws governing legal publications.
It was the first time in years the three groups met to find common ground about the legal notices, said Jim Angell, executive director of the Wyoming Press Association.
The purpose of the study was to determine if the number of public notices could be reduced or shifted to the Internet.
“We decided that nothing can be shifted entirely to the Internet,” Angell said.
The big change is in publication of government employee names, positions and salaries.
Doubled up
Currently, the names and positions are published separately once a year. The names and salaries are then published in a second publication in the same year.
If the bill passes the Legislature, the names of the city, county and town employees, their positions and salaries will be published together once a year.
The counties also will post the information and other notices on their Web pages. The Internet requirement for cities and towns extends only to those that have websites. Angell said many small towns don’t have them.
The reduction in the number of legal publications will cut into the profits of newspapers, he said.
“But our ultimate goal was to present information the best possible way to the people who read our newspapers,” Angell added.
Another change was the reduction of required notices of liquor license sales or transfers. The person applying for the change has to pay the publication costs.
The county commissioners argued that this is a burden on small liquor stores and bars.
The bill reduces number of notices for all types of applications from once a week for four weeks to once a week for two weeks.
It also requires Internet publication of the applications.
Please Wait…
Not. newspapers are dying from manya fflictions these days. Just heard that the nation's newspaper of Record, the new York Times, lost $ 25 million in the las three months. And so it goes. There is no imperative for the public sector to subsidize private newspapers. The essential information will still be available. Besides, the newspapers haven't really given up all that much here.
That provision of publishing the public sector job description, salary , and the name of the person filling that position all at the same time is a long, long overdue policy upgrade .
What Wyoming government really needs is a whole lotta working Sunshine Laws and a lot more transparency everywhere in the halls of democracy. It's a separate issue, I know, but we need to shift the focus to it. You won;t miss the loss of any frequency in legal Notice opublication. But you are already being deprived a lot of other public information and government transparency. Let's start with Full Lobbyist Disclosure....