What is ‘effective’ notice?

YOU BE THE COMMISSIONER: HOW WOULD YOU VOTE?

It always comes across as selfserving when newspaper executives argue to keep public notices in the newspapers.

In fact, Sarasota County Commissioner Nancy Detert pointed out the irony of things when, with a smile, she started her remarks by saying:

Watch the Sarasota County Commission public hearing on public notices here: YourObserver.com/publichearing many people in this room right now literally have the internet in their pocket?

“You can get the internet anywhere,” he said. His point made.

“If

Friedrich Hayek “Road to Serfdom,” 1944

President and Publisher / Emily Walsh, EWalsh@YourObserver.com

Executive Editor and COO / Kat Hughes, KHughes@YourObserver.com

Managing Editor / Eric Garwood, EGarwood@YourObserver.com

Sports Editor / Ryan Kohn, RKohn@YourObserver.com

MATT WALSH

No one reads public notices.”

“They’re just a subsidy for newspapers.”

“Newspapers are a dying breed.”

“It’s all about the money.”

For 25 years, with the advent of the internet and with Republicans controlling more and more legislatures nationwide, Republican lawmakers have been trying to eliminate public-notice advertising in newspapers.

Their goal is becoming increasingly within reach.

One step toward that came last week when the Sarasota County Commission adopted an ordinance giving the Sarasota County administration permission to publish its public notices on the county website instead of publishing them in a newspaper and the newspaper’s website.

And last month, the Manatee County Commission did the same — in about 14 minutes.

In both cases, commissioners touted the same motivation: to save “six figures” of taxpayers’ money.

This scene is playing out all across Florida. In virtually every county, the county commissions and staffs are moving quickly toward eliminating public notice advertising in newspapers and shifting to publishing them on their county websites.

For many people, especially those who don’t give a squat about what their governments are doing to them or for them, this business about public notices and newspapers is meaningless. It’s a headline on their phones they immediately swoosh off their phone screens.

But for those who do care what the county or city commissions are doing with your tax dollars and to your neighborhoods, perhaps you might want to give this subject some thought.

IT’S MORE THAN JUST MONEY It’s not all about the money. There is more to it than that — more nuance about which lawmakers and commissioners appear to have little concern.

It’s about a safeguard that helps keep the government honest. It’s a safeguard that helps citizens monitor and watchdog their government. It’s about creating guardrails that force governments to be almost excessive in their openness and transparency.

For gosh sakes, look at Washington and the hullabaloos over the handling of classified documents. What more convincing does the citizenry need to be convinced that honest transparency is essential to the success of democracy?

Surely you agree: Public notice is essential to the successful functioning of a democracy.

The question is: What is the most effective way to achieve that?

From what we’ve heard, most lawmakers are of the same mind: It’s all about saving money.

Manatee Commissioner George Kruse, Dec. 15: Publishing public notices on MyManatee.org “is a better system overall. It’s also saving us countless hours … It’s also saving us six figures of cost to the

“All the stuff about public and not one person from the public showed up to defend you all. No one.”

Yeah, it always looks like newspaper people are the only ones who care about public notice.

But you could argue with Commissioner Detert that those newspaper people represent the public.

That is what the Fourth Estate does and is supposed to do. We were at the hearing on behalf of the public.

Nonetheless, if you have an interest in how government works and government transparency, you taxpayers.”

Sarasota County Commissioner Nancy Detert, Jan. 18: “It basically comes down to our budget. We’re going into a recession. We have to pull in our horns in every way that we can.”

Ah, there is great irony here with the Republicans chomping to get their notices out of newspapers. To borrow a phrase: They speak with forked tongues.

For 25 years, in election campaign after election campaign, we’ve heard conservative Republican candidates and officeholders blather on about their unwavering commitment to government transparency, open government, smaller government, less regulation, fiscal restraint and free enterprise.

And yet, here they are adopting legislation that shifts public notices from wide dissemination via local newspapers and the newspapers’ websites and the statewide aggregation site, FloridaPublicNotices. com, to arguably obscure government-controlled websites.

Those newspaper websites, by the way, reach 51 million unique users a month. No one reads newspapers anymore? Print is declining for dailies (not weeklies), but newspapers’ website readership is growing. In fact, it’s typically 10 times greater than local government website readership.

And yet, here are the free-market Republicans crafting legislation to take public-notice advertising out of the private sector and increase the size, scope, control and cost of government.

This issue isn’t just about the money.

It is also about this: Republican legislators and county and city commissioners all across Florida hate their communities’ daily newspaper. They cannot stand how the local dailies constantly criticize them. And they hate even more that county and city governments, until now, were forced by statute to pay to advertise public notices in the daily newspapers.

Decades ago, the daily newspaper industry successfully persuaded lawmakers (mostly Democrats) to create public-notice laws that gave the dailies a monopoly on public notices — no competition.

And for Rep. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne, the champion of newspaper haters, that sweet deal for dailies convinced him public notice advertising was indeed a subsidy for newspapers. It didn’t matter that newspapers were performing a service, just as other county vendors do. But for Fine, the notices merely