Opinion: Right to know in jeopardy
April 16, 2009
OPINION
The York Dispatch
"Notice is hereby given ..."
... That you, the people of Pennsylvania, are dangerously close to losing a time-honored service that protects your right to know what local municipalities are up to -- from invitations for bids on projects, to notices of hearings on zoning issues, to sheriff's sales listings.
Senate Bill 419, now before the Appropriations Committee, would eliminate the requirement that municipalities publish legal notices in local newspapers and instead would allow them to be posted on government Web sites.
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) estimates the bill could become law by the end of this month.
Granted -- newspapers have a dog in this fight. The publication of legal notices is a service we have provided, for a fee, for almost 100 years. And we've done it well.
As the PNA points out, newspapers provide dated editions "that are fixed in print and allow judges, lawyers and litigants to quickly and accurately determine whether a notice was given in accordance with law. ...The publisher's affidavit of publication guarantees when the notice appeared... (and) unlike a Web site, newspaper publication cannot be altered at a later date."
For that service, local governments spend less than half of 1 percent of their operating budgets.
And who would miss public notices if SB 419 becomes law? Those without Internet access -- the poor, the elderly and people in rural.. Even among people who have Internet access, research indicates three times as many read a newspaper as log on to the Web on an average day.
More disturbing is the fact the law would put the government in control of its own public notices, eliminating "the independent, third-party verification that newspaper publication provides," according to the PNA.
There is no reason to change this system, unless the purpose is to shut the people out of their government's business.
"Putting public notices on a government-run Web site is like trusting the fox to build and watch the henhouse -- it violates the public's trust and undermines its right to know," according to the PNA.
The York Dispatch
"Notice is hereby given ..."
... That you, the people of Pennsylvania, are dangerously close to losing a time-honored service that protects your right to know what local municipalities are up to -- from invitations for bids on projects, to notices of hearings on zoning issues, to sheriff's sales listings.
Senate Bill 419, now before the Appropriations Committee, would eliminate the requirement that municipalities publish legal notices in local newspapers and instead would allow them to be posted on government Web sites.
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) estimates the bill could become law by the end of this month.
Granted -- newspapers have a dog in this fight. The publication of legal notices is a service we have provided, for a fee, for almost 100 years. And we've done it well.
As the PNA points out, newspapers provide dated editions "that are fixed in print and allow judges, lawyers and litigants to quickly and accurately determine whether a notice was given in accordance with law. ...The publisher's affidavit of publication guarantees when the notice appeared... (and) unlike a Web site, newspaper publication cannot be altered at a later date."
For that service, local governments spend less than half of 1 percent of their operating budgets.
And who would miss public notices if SB 419 becomes law? Those without Internet access -- the poor, the elderly and people in rural.. Even among people who have Internet access, research indicates three times as many read a newspaper as log on to the Web on an average day.
More disturbing is the fact the law would put the government in control of its own public notices, eliminating "the independent, third-party verification that newspaper publication provides," according to the PNA.
There is no reason to change this system, unless the purpose is to shut the people out of their government's business.
"Putting public notices on a government-run Web site is like trusting the fox to build and watch the henhouse -- it violates the public's trust and undermines its right to know," according to the PNA.
