Every year (and 2014 is no exception) some lawmaker somewhere trots out legislation that would allow local governments to take over the job of publishing public notices on their own web sites, in newsletters or in some other obscure way.
The reasons vary, but a recurring theme is to save money — even though the cost of such notices averages less than one half of 1 percent of overall spending.
The reality is that some in government simply don’t want to be held accountable in the way that public notices published in the local newspaper make them accountable. Some want to control both the message and the medium.
Public notice is critical to all kinds of public business, from announcing when an elected body will meet to when an election will be held (and the deadline for candidates for enter the race) to when bids are being accepted for paving jobs to who is getting those bids and at what price.
Private—sector publication of public notices is a another form of the checks and balances that ensure government is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Do we really want to depend on local government to ensure that bid information, for instance, is properly posted on a government web site for the specified amount of time at a site easily accessed and widely known? No. Web sites are ephemeral, and information can come and go — or be hacked.
There are strict rules and regulations concerning public notices published in the local paper, and after publication they exist as a permanent, hard—copy record of what was said and when it appeared. When a public notice is published in the newspaper there is no question whether a local government fulfilled its disclosure responsibilities, which can have major legal ramifications. It’s right there in black and white, and widely distributed.
Yes, newspapers make money from public notices, but those notices play a critical role in doing public business and are well worth the relatively small cost to taxpayers. Citizens know where to find such notices in the paper, they don’t need a computer to get access (or even a subscription — just go to the library) and they don’t need to know which web page is which or where to find that page.
In the business that’s known as “fixity” and it means that it’s fixed in place — and will be there for decades to come. That’s more than can be said about web sites, particularly those maintained by a handful of local employees or some vendor hired to do the job. Just take a look at a few local government web sites and see how many contain outdated or inaccessible pages. Some don’t get updated for months at a time.
In the end, this is as much about transparency as guaranteed access. Making the government publicize its business through the private sector ensures that everyone is looking over everyone else’s shoulder. If the bid process as published is fuzzy, someone is going to catch it — usually someone who wants to submit a bid. If there’s a mistake in the pubic notice as published, someone in local government is going to hear about it and raise red flags. Everyone has a vested interest in keeping it public and keeping it accurate.
This is what the public part of public business — and public notice — is all about.
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