Opinion: The public sector
April 16, 2009
OPINION
Lebanon Daily News
The term “public notices” is easy to define. It is information that is to be seen by just-plain-folks. You. Your neighbor. Those on your street and in your community.
Public notices routinely involve municipal and school-board business. The issues can be significant. Say, rezoning to build an oil refinery in what was once a farm field.
That’s a little over-the-top, we admit, but it demonstrates a worst-case scenario if legislators succeed in changing the rules for the publication of these public notices.
Some state officials want to take public notices out of the public sector, where they have forever been. Public notices are part of the connective tissue that holds newspapers together and binds them to the communities that they serve.
Newspapers are understood to be centers for information for the coverage area that they establish. For our newspaper, it’s in the name: If it’s Lebanon County, we’re the paper of record. It’s been that way for longer than anyone in this county has been alive. We first published in 1872.
Some elected officials, and count state Sen. Mike Folmer on board with this plan, want government entities to be allowed to post public notices on their own Web sites.
This defeats the purpose of a public notice, and it defeats efforts by individuals who want to stay informed.
Statistics show that 30 to 40 percent of Pennsylvanians don’t have Internet access at home. So anyone who wants to keep up with his municipal news, under the proposed arrangement, would have to find an available computer (say, at the library), know how to use it, know what to look for, know how to get to the right place on the Web site and get the information.
That’s a little more complex than looking at the page one newspaper index, seeing “Public Notices, 4D” and turning to the proper page.
We’re all for government posting records on line. It should have been done a long time before it became more or less routine, but government still doesn’t do the greatest job of providing information.
And let’s face it: Governments are made up of people, and people are fallible. They are prone to both error and malfeasance. If the rules are eased for public notices, if activity is allowed to go on out of the public eye — which is what newspapers act as and have for decades — the opportunity for such shenanigans increases. If the proper motivation is also in place, woe to those who might suddenly find themselves in the way of some “progress” that is only progressive for a select few. Haven’t we seen enough of that writ large?
A robust community newspaper stands against such things. It is one of the jobs that it does. Removing publication rules removes that job from the newspaper at a time when we certainly don’t need any less government transparency.
Keep public notices public: Keep them in local newspapers. It’s better for the people who both the municipal government and the newspaper serve. And, frankly, it’s income for newspapers, something of which we are aware and can’t shy away from. But newspapers, if they are performing their community role correctly, are about more than money. And offering public notices in our pages is and always has been more a function of service to community than anything else. It ought to continue.
Lebanon Daily News
The term “public notices” is easy to define. It is information that is to be seen by just-plain-folks. You. Your neighbor. Those on your street and in your community.
Public notices routinely involve municipal and school-board business. The issues can be significant. Say, rezoning to build an oil refinery in what was once a farm field.
That’s a little over-the-top, we admit, but it demonstrates a worst-case scenario if legislators succeed in changing the rules for the publication of these public notices.
Some state officials want to take public notices out of the public sector, where they have forever been. Public notices are part of the connective tissue that holds newspapers together and binds them to the communities that they serve.
Newspapers are understood to be centers for information for the coverage area that they establish. For our newspaper, it’s in the name: If it’s Lebanon County, we’re the paper of record. It’s been that way for longer than anyone in this county has been alive. We first published in 1872.
Some elected officials, and count state Sen. Mike Folmer on board with this plan, want government entities to be allowed to post public notices on their own Web sites.
This defeats the purpose of a public notice, and it defeats efforts by individuals who want to stay informed.
Statistics show that 30 to 40 percent of Pennsylvanians don’t have Internet access at home. So anyone who wants to keep up with his municipal news, under the proposed arrangement, would have to find an available computer (say, at the library), know how to use it, know what to look for, know how to get to the right place on the Web site and get the information.
That’s a little more complex than looking at the page one newspaper index, seeing “Public Notices, 4D” and turning to the proper page.
We’re all for government posting records on line. It should have been done a long time before it became more or less routine, but government still doesn’t do the greatest job of providing information.
And let’s face it: Governments are made up of people, and people are fallible. They are prone to both error and malfeasance. If the rules are eased for public notices, if activity is allowed to go on out of the public eye — which is what newspapers act as and have for decades — the opportunity for such shenanigans increases. If the proper motivation is also in place, woe to those who might suddenly find themselves in the way of some “progress” that is only progressive for a select few. Haven’t we seen enough of that writ large?
A robust community newspaper stands against such things. It is one of the jobs that it does. Removing publication rules removes that job from the newspaper at a time when we certainly don’t need any less government transparency.
Keep public notices public: Keep them in local newspapers. It’s better for the people who both the municipal government and the newspaper serve. And, frankly, it’s income for newspapers, something of which we are aware and can’t shy away from. But newspapers, if they are performing their community role correctly, are about more than money. And offering public notices in our pages is and always has been more a function of service to community than anything else. It ought to continue.
