• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 6, 2017

The pissing match in the Garden State escalated last week, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stepped up his attack on the law requiring public legal notices to appear in newspapers. The state’s newspapers responded with an estimate showing official spending on notices is far lower than Christie’s administration claims.

Like most states, New Jersey law mandates that local, county and state government entities publish legal notices in newspapers advising the public of things like hearings, sheriff’s auctions, unclaimed property and the tendering of public contracts.

Christie claims the law is outdated and a taxpayer-funded giveaway to newspapers, since the same notices can be published online by government Web sites for free.

When first presenting the proposed rule change last year, Christie claimed spending on legal notices of all kinds came to $80 million per year, but this estimate was immediately disputed by the New Jersey Press Association, which initially claimed the figure was closer to $20 million.

This estimate was based on a survey last conducted in 2010, and the NJPA was left scrambling when Christie’s administration dismissed their numbers as low ball.

Now on the back foot, the NJPA promised to conduct a new survey and present revised figures for public notice spending by the end of January. But that self-imposed deadline came and went, and in February, Christie returned to the offensive, blasting the NJPA for the delay.

Last week, the NJPA finally delivered its results: statewide, newspapers took in $32.3 million in public spending on all legal notices in 2016 – less than half Christie’s estimate, but still 62% higher than the NJPA’s previous figure. This figure includes both private and publicly funded spending.

Overall, private spending came to $24.9 million, while government spending on legal notices funded by taxpayers came to $7.3 million.

Newspaper publishers claim Christie’s campaign against public notices is actually retribution for their frequent criticisms of the governor, including editorials attacking his support for Donald Trump’s presidential bid and the involvement of close aides in the “Bridgegate” scandal.