by Teri Henning
Public notices are printed in newspapers and posted on newspaper websites to let you know what government agencies are planning to do. They include meeting notices from school districts, notices about tax increases, school closings, gas drilling activity and more. Some school districts and local governments want to take public notices out of newspapers, saying that they will save money and reach more people by putting the notices on government websites only. Neither of these claims is true.
It will cost government significantly more money to take over the public notice process, including millions of dollars in technology and personnel costs each year. You only have to look at recent headlines to realize that government agencies can’t keep up with their current websites, due to the costs associated with maintaining them. There are reports that several open government websites may be shut down by the federal government, due to a lack of funding. The Pennsylvania Department of State recently explained that due to state budget cutbacks, fewer campaign-finance reports were being posted on the Department’s website.
The Department had to outsource some of the online posting work; its website reminded the public that paper copies of the reports were available at its office in Harrisburg. Public notices can’t work this way, and Pennsylvania’s 4,000 plus state and local agencies would have to spend a lot of money—that Pennsylvania doesn’t have—to develop, implement and maintain secure, searchable, archivable websites for public notices.
Newspapers across the state have been providing this service, often at rates well below commercial advertising rates, for more than a hundred years. Today, newspapers print public notices in the newspaper, put them on their websites, and upload them to a statewide, searchable database, www.mypublicnotices.com, at no additional charge to government or taxpayers. In other words, an online, searchable system is already in place for those who want to view online notices in one place.
The fact is, putting public notices on government websites alone would not reach more people. Too many Pennsylvanians are not on the Internet, including about 58 percent of seniors,
Forty-six percent of persons with a disability, up to 40 percent of low-income homes, and 30-40 percent of some minority populations. Any Internet-only solution would severely hinder these individuals’ ability to learn about government activities and plans.
The proposals would also allow government to control the entire public notice process, including the specifics of where and how a particular notice is posted. Notices could be spread among more than 4,000 local government websites, making it very difficult for an interested citizen or business owner to know where to find them. Regardless of how much faith you have in your local officials, there is real potential for allegations of “hiding” controversial notices, or the awarding of contracts to “favorite” contractors.
A recent article in the Press-Enterprise (Bloomsburg) provides a real-life example of why Internet-only solutions do not work for government, businesses, or taxpayers. Last year, Berwick School District received a waiver from the state Department of Education allowing it to advertise bids on the district website alone, instead of newspapers. Prior to receiving the waiver, the district spent about $3,000-$7,000 a year on public notice advertising. Since switching to online-only bidding, the district reported that the number of bidders has plunged.
A recent bid advertisement for a new track brought seven out-of-state bidders, at a cost of $1.4 million, along with complaints from a local contractor that there was no local notice of the bid.
School officials defended the track project costs, but expressed concern that some other recent bids seemed high. They had difficulty gauging the value of those bids, though, because there were so few bidders. According to the Superintendent, it has become clear “that by not advertising bids in the local newspaper, we’re creating the risk of losing more money than we were spending on the ads.” At this week’s board meeting, he announced his intention to resume newspaper advertising.
Yes, the newspaper industry is changing, along with every other industry affected by technology and our changing world. Pennsylvania’s newspapers, though, are a strong, vital part of the communities that they serve. They remain the most-read, most reliable way for members of a community to keep up with current events and to know what government is planning—whether it’s a tax increase, a school closing, or a property reassessment before it happens. Public notices still belong in newspapers.
(Teri Henning is president, Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.)
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