2/26/2014 8:55:00 AM
Editorial
Don't make public notices less public
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When considering the public's right to unfettered access, transparency and efficiency from its government, why place control of these things in the gatekeeper's hands? Specifically, we mean giving government the power to decide what we get to know and how, through Arizona HB2554.
Currently, newspapers inform the public not only through news articles but also legals - also known as the public notices or legal notices - which appear regularly in front of the Classified section. The newspapers not only publish them in print, but also on their Internet sites as well as on a statewide, searchable website operated by the Arizona Newspapers Association for the past 15 years.
House Bill 2554, sponsored by Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Scottsdale, would change that by taking many public notices out of print and placing them online only through a new database by the Arizona Corporation Commission.
Imagine a municipal government not releasing the details for its plans to resurface the local roads or build a pipeline; further, the costs are illusive. How about when a controversial business files for incorporation in your town? But, the details of its intent, exact location and the names of its principals are not readily available. What if its owners intend to open in your neighborhood?
Neither scenarios' leaders would come directly to you with all of this; however, they might have a public meeting about it or publish the information. But how would you know that either if the notice was placed on an obscure website?
Also flawed in HB2554 is the fee the businesses would have to pay, and the ACC would get more money - about $65,000 - to create the website and data storage to make this happen. That, by the way, would be on top of the $250,000 in taxpayer money the ACC has received for a website that has never actually worked as intended.
Further, the notices would be online for only 90 days through the ACC, as opposed to permanently available through the ANA website, the printed newspapers, and their online archives.
What this bill, if approved and signed, would result in is more government, less access to public information, delivering less service at an added cost to the private sector, in addition to competing with private businesses already doing the job correctly.
The Chino Valley Review and Prescott Newspapers, Inc., as well as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, among others, oppose this bill.
This legislation appears to be a solution to a problem that does not exist.
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