The proof that public notices published in newspapers are more effective than those that are posted on government websites doesn’t get any more direct and conclusive than this.

Last year, the jail in Ford County, Ill. needed a new generator. The sheriff put a bid-solicitation notice on the county website. It isn’t clear whether the notice got a response, but the sheriff later asked the county’s Public Building Commission to approve a $72,576 bid for a generator. The Commission initially approved the expenditure but rescinded the approval when it learned the sheriff hadn’t published a notice in a local newspaper, as state law requires.

So the sheriff published a new notice in the Ford County Record, a weekly paper with a circulation of about 2,200. The county received four or five bids in response to the notice, according to County Commissioner Tom McQuinn. The bid the commission ultimately accepted was not only cheaper than the original but it paid for a larger generator that is now also being used to power part of the Ford County Courthouse next door to the jail.

When the sheriff came back to the commission last week to request a new boiler for the jail, McQuinn suggested he first publish a notice in a local newspaper to solicit bids for the heating system. McQuinn also asked the commission to insist that a newspaper notice be published before it approves any future projects, regardless of the cost of the project. (Illinois law requires newspaper notice only for non-emergency county purchases that cost more than $30,000.)

“The generator was a perfect example (of why we should advertise for bids),” McQuinn told the other commissioners, according to the Record. “When we put (the project) out for bids, we got a hell of a lot bigger generator (than the one in the original contract), and we got a lot more project accomplished for less money. That’s why I feel it needs to be advertised.”

It’s not an accident that McQuinn understands the power of newspaper notice. He worked at the local paper for 20 years, back when it was still called the Paxton Daily Record. After he left the paper, his wife “conned him into running for the County Commission,” he jokes. The citizens of Ford County are lucky he did.