EDITORIAL: Newspapers only, or municipal websites for public notices? We’ll take the latter.
Public notices in a 1992 edition of the Shenandoah Evening Herald.
A few weeks ago at a Schuylkill County zoning hearing, a Mahanoy City resident lamented that he felt the community had not been properly notified about the matter before the board.
As required by law, neighboring property owners received a letter in the mail, a flyer was posted near the property, and a public notice was published, twice, in a print newspaper.
“While we acknowledge that the notice was publicized in the Republican-Herald, the reality is newspaper readership has declined significantly,” he told the zoning board. “In today’s world, legal print notices alone are not a reliable way to ensure that residents are actually informed.”
He’s absolutely right and his concerns echo what we have shared in recent weeks about efforts to update the Newspaper Advertising Act.
Right now, two bills are moving through the Pennsylvania legislature to modernize the requirement.
One bill is backed by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, and it’s easy to see why.
House Bill 1291, sponsored by Rep. Robert Freeman, an Easton-area Democrat, would effectively preserve the monopoly print newspapers currently enjoy over municipal public notices.
They won’t tell you that, though.
The other bill, Senate Bill 194, has led to a flurry of oppositional editorials from newspapers across Pennsylvania, and, again, it’s easy to see why.
SB 194 would give governments the option of using their own website to publish public notices instead of a local newspaper.
Newspapers stand to lose a large sum if OUR taxpayer dollars no longer have to leave town.
East Union Township spent $2,836.10 on advertising in the Hazleton newspaper last December. With the law as-is, and with HB 1291 as proposed, East Union Township has no other choice in the matter.
These are two issues the PNA and newspapers statewide have downplayed and have refused to discuss.
An editorial in the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat mentions in the headline that newspapers and news sites are the best places for the public to access notices. They claim HB 1291 “would expand places where public notices could appear to include digital media sites and with organizations that have no print component.”
It really doesn’t. Under the current version of the bill, The Sentinel would not be able to accept public notice advertising, despite being a leading local news source in the communities we serve.
PNA President William Cotter in a recent editorial also claimed that, if SB 194 passed, “Government agencies will likely need to hire additional staff and purchase more technology to comply with state public notice requirements.”
Many likely wouldn’t. Every borough in the Sentinel‘s coverage area except Girardville, Ringtown, and Centralia maintains a website suitable to host public notices. Publishing the public notices to the website likely would not be a time-consuming or burdensome task for existing office staff, either.
He also claimed it would be more expensive than advertising public notices in the newspaper. Using the East Union Township example, this year, the township has $3,520 budgeted monthly for a full-time secretary.
Assuming two hours of the secretary’s time is used to publish public notices monthly, it would cost the municipality $44, as the township already has a suitable website.
A far, far cry from the amount East Union, or any local municipality, is paying each month.
Cotter also claims that SB 194 “would require taxpayers to routinely search multiple websites to stay informed about ways their hard-earned tax dollars might be spent.”
“Creating such unnecessary confusion is not only absurd and burdensome, but it is also a disservice to the public and an obstacle to participatory government,” Cotter said.
Cotter may be right to an extent, but the solution isn’t to keep public notices off of the locally-owned, homegrown news websites that are filling the voids left by print newspapers in communities like Shenandoah, Lebanon, and Levittown.
In many ways, those news websites, like the Sentinel, are the only way taxpayers “stay informed about ways their hard-earned tax dollars might be spent.” The Sentinel was the only news source at the zoning hearing mentioned earlier, and has been the only news source consistently and thoroughly covering local government in West Mahanoy Township, Union Township, Ringtown, and much of northern Schuylkill County.
If news outlets are the only suitable place for municipalities to publish public notices, let’s give local governments the option to not only keep our taxpayer dollars local, but save taxpayer dollars and more effectively inform the folks that matter: THE TAXPAYERS.
Excluding outlets like the Sentinel means public notices published by municipal governments in northern Schuylkill County are just as effective whether they’re in the Bloomsburg paper or the Johnstown paper.
Just ask the man from Mahanoy City.
Contact your State Representative today and tell them you want to see HB 1291 amended to include news outlets like the Sentinel, or, contact your State Senator and tell them to vote ‘YES’ on SB 194.
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