“Don’t let the fox guard the henhouse!” we warn legislators when they consider moving public notices from newspapers to government websites. There’s too much incentive for governments to hide notices if the responsibility for their publication is left solely to them, the argument goes. Newspapers are the independent publisher the public needs to ensure official notices actually see the light of day.
But the argument only works if newspapers guard the henhouse by providing oversight of the notices their government clients are statutorily required to publish.
NAM launches website linking statewide public notice sites
Newspaper Association Managers, Inc., a consortium of North American associations and non-profit groups representing the newspaper industry, recently launched a website aimed at promoting public notice in newspapers. PNRC is a NAM member.
The website, USALegalNotice.com, pulls together links to the 47 statewide public notice sites operated by state press associations. The site allows the public to more easily access the latest public notice advertisements in different states, including foreclosures, public hearings, financial reports, ordinances and resolutions, and other important government proceedings.
Ballot measures, council vote nullified over notice issues
Five proposals to amend the City Charter of Tahlequah, Okla., were nullified last year as a result of the city’s failure to publish the city ballot in an official newspaper, according to the Tahlequah Daily Press.
The mistake was discovered prior to the Nov. 3 election when a local resident contacted the Daily Press and alerted the paper to the missing ballots. The City Council later voted to keep the questions on the ballot to survey voters about the issues they raise.
Effort to end newspaper notice in Michigan falls short
Two months ago, Michigan appeared to be in grave danger of moving its notices from newspapers to government websites.
As one of his final acts as a state legislator, now-former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering (pictured at right), led the move to eliminate newspaper notice in the state. Chatfield, who would be term-limited out of office on Dec. 31, had pursued that goal since he was elected to the House six years earlier. He made it one of his priorities for the brief lame-duck session that followed the Nov. 3 election.
Public notice in grave danger in Michigan
Earlier the same week he visited the White House as part of Donald Trump’s ongoing effort to overturn the results of the presidential election, Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering (pictured at left) saw members of his caucus introduce a legislative package he hopes is the capstone of his half-decade project to move public notice in the state from newspapers to government websites.
It’s an unusual package of 105 separate bills that eliminate particular government notices — e.g., local government meetings, publication of new ordinances, etc. — spread throughout the state’s code. The bills are “tie-barred” to a single proposal, House Bill 6440, designed to serve as Michigan’s new general public notice statute. The tie-barred bills will only take effect if HB6440 passes.
Wyoming moves step closer to cutting newspaper notice
Wyoming’s joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee voted narrowly last month to sponsor legislation in the 2021 session that would allow cities and counties to move notices for meeting minutes and employee salaries from newspapers to their own websites. The committee advanced the bill on a 7-6 vote after hearing testimony that it would save cash-strapped local governments $400,000 in annual expenditures. Six Republicans and the only Democrat on the committee voted in favor of the bill.
Interim committees signal potential trouble ahead
Many in the newspaper industry are wondering how public notice laws will fare in light of the fiscal crises precipitated in many states by the pandemic. Interim committee hearings last month in Wyoming and Arkansas suggest the answer may depend, at least in part, on the size and scale of each state’s budget deficit.
The Sept. 11 hearing in Cheyenne left Wyoming Press Association (WPA) Executive Director Darcie Hoffland in a state of heightened concern. By a 10-3 vote, the joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee approved a motion to direct the Legislative Service Office to draft a bill that would move notices for meeting minutes and government-employee salaries from newspapers to local government websites. [CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated the motion was “to introduce a bill next session” that would move the notices.]
Disastrous decision to limit print surveys undermines Census
The federal government is finding it more difficult than usual to get people to complete the 2020 Census. The headline on Politico Magazine’s recent article about the once-every-decade constitutional exercise — “A Brush with Catastrophe: Inside the 2020 Census Meltdown” — suggests the scale of the problem.
The meltdown is due, in part, to the pandemic and the Trump Administration’s aggressive maneuvers to obstruct the count. But another significant driver has been the Census Bureau’s incomprehensible decision to force most Americans to respond to the survey via the internet.
Raising the revenue issue: ‘Its not a subsidy. It’s a service’
After more than 57 years in print, the Los Alamos Monitor published its final issue on Sunday. When early last week it announced the decision to close, the New Mexico paper blamed its financial woes “in part to an unusual decision by local government to send its legal advertising to a free newspaper competitor at an apparent higher cost to taxpayers.”
The Monitor isn’t the only paper that has come to rely on revenue from public notice advertising for stability. As other forms of advertising have declined, the financial significance of newspaper notice has grown.
PNRC contest winners’ concerns often disregarded by officials
Small towns are different.
Take Crosby, North Dakota, population 1,300, for instance. It’s located in the upper northwest corner of the state, approximately 35 miles east of Montana and six miles south of the Canadian border. Many folks there have an extraordinary interest in the public notices published in the local paper, the Journal.
“Sometimes we get calls from people aware of something happening in town and wondering why a notice about it wasn’t published in the paper,” says Cecile Wehrman (pictured on left in photo above), the Journal’s editor and publisher.