• by Ray Schultz , March 11, 2024

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.”

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.