Public notices have a long and important, if not particularly prominent place, in our system of government.
Public notices are those sometimes inconspicuous announcements, published in this newspaper and others throughout the state and nation, which inform the public about government actions – budget proposals, sales of government equipment or property, meetings, bidding processes for contracts and other operations of federal, state and local agencies.
Public notices are older than newspapers. According to historians, early civilizations published notices in public squares. In some locales, town criers performed the service of informing the public of important information until the task was taken over by newspapers, the first in 1665.
Publication of public notices in newspapers has been required since most of the states and the federal government were formed here in the U.S.
But enough history.
The purpose of public notices is simply to put information where taxpayers and voters can see it, so they know what is going on. An important premise in our system of government, from the beginning, has been that information on governmental activities must be available so the public can make well-informed decisions. If you don’t know how your City Council or School Board is spending your money, how do you know if they’re doing a good job? If you don’t know when an important meeting is that may lead to big changes in your life, how can you attend?
Public notices also enable citizens to keep track of what’s happening in the court system, which protects Americans’ right to due process of law.
If public notices were not in the newspaper, where should they be? That is the question some of our Oregon legislators, as well as those in other states, are asking.
With the rise of the Internet, state and local government agencies in Oregon are asking why they can’t just post their public notices on Web sites. At the same time, the Oregon Association of Broadcasters has gotten two state representatives, both former broadcasters themselves, to introduce a bill, HB 3184, which would allow agencies to “post”notices on the air – on TV or the radio.
The latter proposal was heard by the House Judiciary Committee in a public hearing last Friday in Salem. Broadcasters argue that they are the “pre-eminent form of news coverage” and that they should have a piece of the pie.
Yes, there is some self-interest in our writing this editorial. Your local newspaper does receive a relatively small amount of revenue each year for publishing public notices from the city, the school district and other agencies.
But the idea of trying to put public notices, which often involve numerous, sometimes complicated specifications, into an 180-word “spot” or “teaser,” which would steer listeners or viewers to a Web site with the entire notice posted, is ridiculous.
The reason newspapers have been the vehicle for such information is that they offer something the airwaves and the Internet do not: Newspapers, even in this modern day of Twitter, Facebook, iPhones and other technological baubles, continue to provide responsible, permanently verifiable publication of public notices – just as they have for 350 years.
Discounting the broadcasters’ proposal for a moment, think about the Internet, which is definitely part of this discussion.
Yes, the Internet is relatively low-cost – after governments spend thousands of additional taxpayer dollars for secure servers, programming, posting and auditing. But how secure is the Internet?
When federal officials openly admit that hacking is a national security threat, what makes us think the local school district site or the state Department of Justice is immune to an attack?
Or, how do we know the numbers in a request for proposals for a government contract haven’t been tampered with by someone with an interest in steering others away from bidding? How do we know an unscrupulous public official hasn’t “adjusted” the numbers in a posted budget?
The problems our nation has had with on-line voting are not reassuring. A top-to-bottom review of California’s systems in 2007 found significant security flaws in all of the manufacturers’ voting systems, significant enough to allow a single non-expert to compromise an entire election. What makes us think similar problems won’t occur with public notices?
That doesn’t discount the Web entirely. In fact, the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, of which The New Era is a member, has a Web site that carries nearly every public notice and legal advertisement published in Oregon’s newspapers, which has been established to make it easier for readers to make use of that information in digital format.
Another problem with the Internet is that, according to the AARP, more than half of seniors 55 and older don’t even have access to the Web. Older people also are more likely, the numbers show, than younger adults to read public notices.
The bottom line is that most of the issues associated with the Internet – security, access, reliability – are not and have not been major problems for newspapers. What you see printed in this week’s paper will still be printed on these pages as long as those pages exist – probably long after our Internet server goes down or the data gets corrupted.
Also, when it costs hundreds or thousands of dollars to print a newspaper page, it is a lot less tempting to tweak the numbers and print another page.
Another reason why newspapers should continue to be the vehicle for public notices is that newspapers are the only independent media that faithfully cover follow and report the goings-on of government.. It’s not uncommon that the only member of the public at a City Council meeting is a newspaper reporter, faithfully recording each action taken. Newspapers are there when other media aren’t.
When was the last time a TV station or radio station showed up in Sweet Home to cover something other than a fire in the bowling alley or a bomb threat at a school – oh, and Fire School each spring?
Where is the Internet when the City Council is voting on that budget proposal? Where were the TV stations when the new Sweet Home schools superintendent was hired?
We are the watchdogs for the public. We routinely monitor and report what government – your elected officials – are up to.
People who are interested in reading public notices know where to find them. According to a poll conducted last fall, 78 percent of Oregon adults who read public notices prefer to read them in the newspaper – far more than do the mail or Internet, which were the other two options.
Yes, public notices can be boring and many readers may wonder why they should care.
It’s a big deal because it’s bad policy to move from a time-honored and effective method of disseminating public information to one that is rife with potential problems.
The few problems associated with printing public notices in newspapers can and should be solved. If the public notices are too boring and complicated for today’s readers, then newspapers and local governments need to work together to change the way they are formatted to make them more understandable. It’s being done in other states and it can be done here. If cost is a hurdle, that problem can be addressed in a productive manner as well.
Public notices are a necessary to the functioning of our government and they need to be effective. The system we’ve used has worked for centuries and if the wheel isn’t broken, it doesn’t need fixing.