Alaska legislators are mulling a bill that would harm local media by removing the requirement that public notices related to sale and removal of water be placed in
newspapers.
Budget hawks have for decades said that legal notices are costly, Must Read Alaska writes.
Local newspapers oppose
Senate 68. But they are focusing not on the revenue loss to themselves but on the need for transparency, it continues.
“The bill will do a disservice to our community and the state
as a whole,” writes Virginia Farmier, the executive director of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Must Read Alaska reports. “The public has relied
on community newspapers to keep them informed and to publish public notices. If the state government publishes their own notices, where’s the transparency in
that?”
Farmier adds, “I took an informal poll of people in Fairbanks asking if they knew the state had an ‘online public notices’ website and
they did not.”
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The bill was to be heard on Monday.
This bill reflects a growing nationwide movement. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that
allows local governments to post on government websites or in free publications.
Last year, The Dispatch and The Courier-Tribune warned
readers about two North Carolina House bills requiring that legal notices be posted on government websites and not in newspapers.
The lost revenue is important, “but the ability
for the folks in the community to really know what is going on is more important,” said Justin Little, advertising manager for The Dispatch and The Courier-Tribune in
Asheboro, according to the paper.
As in Alaska, residents in many locales lack affordable, high-speed internet service.
Meanwhile, a recent
survey by America’s Newspapers found that readers are against this legislation.
Of the consumers polled, 66% believe that publishing public notices in newspapers
should be required. And 57% say newspapers and their websites are more reliable than city, county or state websites for accessing public notices.