Two months ago, Michigan appeared to be in grave danger of moving its notices from newspapers to government websites.
As one of his final acts as a state legislator, now-former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering (pictured at right), led the move to eliminate newspaper notice in the state. Chatfield, who would be term-limited out of office on Dec. 31, had pursued that goal since he was elected to the House six years earlier. He made it one of his priorities for the brief lame-duck session that followed the Nov. 3 election.
Public notice in grave danger in Michigan
Earlier the same week he visited the White House as part of Donald Trump’s ongoing effort to overturn the results of the presidential election, Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering (pictured at left) saw members of his caucus introduce a legislative package he hopes is the capstone of his half-decade project to move public notice in the state from newspapers to government websites.
It’s an unusual package of 105 separate bills that eliminate particular government notices — e.g., local government meetings, publication of new ordinances, etc. — spread throughout the state’s code. The bills are “tie-barred” to a single proposal, House Bill 6440, designed to serve as Michigan’s new general public notice statute. The tie-barred bills will only take effect if HB6440 passes.
Wyoming moves step closer to cutting newspaper notice
Wyoming’s joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee voted narrowly last month to sponsor legislation in the 2021 session that would allow cities and counties to move notices for meeting minutes and employee salaries from newspapers to their own websites. The committee advanced the bill on a 7-6 vote after hearing testimony that it would save cash-strapped local governments $400,000 in annual expenditures. Six Republicans and the only Democrat on the committee voted in favor of the bill.
Interim committees signal potential trouble ahead
Many in the newspaper industry are wondering how public notice laws will fare in light of the fiscal crises precipitated in many states by the pandemic. Interim committee hearings last month in Wyoming and Arkansas suggest the answer may depend, at least in part, on the size and scale of each state’s budget deficit.
The Sept. 11 hearing in Cheyenne left Wyoming Press Association (WPA) Executive Director Darcie Hoffland in a state of heightened concern. By a 10-3 vote, the joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee approved a motion to direct the Legislative Service Office to draft a bill that would move notices for meeting minutes and government-employee salaries from newspapers to local government websites. [CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated the motion was “to introduce a bill next session” that would move the notices.]
Disastrous decision to limit print surveys undermines Census
The federal government is finding it more difficult than usual to get people to complete the 2020 Census. The headline on Politico Magazine’s recent article about the once-every-decade constitutional exercise — “A Brush with Catastrophe: Inside the 2020 Census Meltdown” — suggests the scale of the problem.
The meltdown is due, in part, to the pandemic and the Trump Administration’s aggressive maneuvers to obstruct the count. But another significant driver has been the Census Bureau’s incomprehensible decision to force most Americans to respond to the survey via the internet.
Raising the revenue issue: ‘Its not a subsidy. It’s a service’
After more than 57 years in print, the Los Alamos Monitor published its final issue on Sunday. When early last week it announced the decision to close, the New Mexico paper blamed its financial woes “in part to an unusual decision by local government to send its legal advertising to a free newspaper competitor at an apparent higher cost to taxpayers.”
The Monitor isn’t the only paper that has come to rely on revenue from public notice advertising for stability. As other forms of advertising have declined, the financial significance of newspaper notice has grown.
PNRC contest winners’ concerns often disregarded by officials
Small towns are different.
Take Crosby, North Dakota, population 1,300, for instance. It’s located in the upper northwest corner of the state, approximately 35 miles east of Montana and six miles south of the Canadian border. Many folks there have an extraordinary interest in the public notices published in the local paper, the Journal.
“Sometimes we get calls from people aware of something happening in town and wondering why a notice about it wasn’t published in the paper,” says Cecile Wehrman (pictured on left in photo above), the Journal’s editor and publisher.
Digital news’ public notice role overstated in Poynter article
In a kind of follow-up to a previous story he reported 10 years ago on government subsidies for newspapers, former newspaper editor David Westphal took a close look earlier this month for the Poynter Institute at the state of public notice.
Although we’re never happy when public notice is framed as a government subsidy, as opposed to payment for service rendered, we concede reasonable people may disagree on that point. We also know from working with him as a source on the story that Westphal takes his responsibility to report the issue fairly and accurately quite seriously. Few journalists have covered public notice with more insight and intelligence than Westphal brings to this story.
Governor calls newspaper notice requirement ‘stupid’
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) clearly appreciates good journalism and supports a free and independent press. But it’s also clear he hasn’t thought very deeply about public notice and he is too confident of his understanding of the issue.
We base that judgment on extemporaneous remarks Colorado’s chief executive made during an April 17 press conference on the state’s response to COVID-19.
With about 15 minutes remaining in the press conference, Denver Post reporter Alex Burness asked the governor for his thoughts on the impact of news deserts in the state and whether he believes government support or funding of the news business is appropriate.
Cuomo uses emergency powers to suspend notices
Before it approved a budget in the early morning hours and left Albany last month as the coronavirus first struck the state with full force, the New York legislature granted Gov. Andrew Cuomo (pictured at left) emergency power to suspend laws he believes compromise public health. The governor has not been shy about exercising his new exigent authority.
On April 20, Cuomo issued an executive order that, among other things, allowed cities and towns in the state to file property tax assessment rolls up to 30 days later than the June 1 statutory deadline, and authorized them to publish the assessment notices “solely online so long as the date for hearing complaints is prominently displayed”.