We have long considered The Lincoln County News to be the community’s newspaper. Our family acting in a stewardship role of the paper, working tirelessly with the staff to keep the news reported, lights on, and the presses rolling. In this day and age, this responsibility can be more difficult to realize.
Every few years, the Legislature brings a bill forward to get rid of public notices in newspapers, or at least to remove the law requiring them. Well, the 132nd Legislature has a bill that proposes exactly that again. L.D. 2042, “An Act to Eliminate the Requirement for Municipalities to Provide Public Notice in a Newspaper,” heads to public hearing before the Committee on State and Local Government on Wednesday, Jan. 21.
On its face, this may seem like a reasonable step in cutting costs and giving a break to taxpayers. But we must look at what purpose public notices serve.
Notices provide the date and time for public meetings, when towns are going out to bid on projects, when ordinances are being proposed or votes are being held to change them. An informed electorate is critical to ensuring participation, especially in a democratic society where the townspeople are the ruling body.
Public notice requirements ensure town business is conducted in an open and transparent manner, with a check and balance to guarantee the information is disseminated in a timely manner on a platform all can access.
To this end, the Maine Press Association has been running mainenotices.com for over a decade. Member newspapers, including LCN, load all the notices to this page so the information is available for free to the public. While notices are also run in the newspaper, posting the notices online ensures the information is available to all, even if they do not have a subscription or buy the paper.
On its website, the United Nations identifies essential elements of democracy, including the holding of periodic free and fair elections by universal suffrage and by secret ballot as the expression of the will of the people; the separation of powers; transparency and accountability in public administration; and free, independent and pluralistic media.
Public notices express when elections will be held and provide a level of transparency into the public administration. A free and independent media will ensure notices are made accurately and timely to help ensure separation of powers exist. L.D. 2042, as written, would erode some of these basic tenants of democracy and may lead to less trust in local government.
There have been a number of newspapers that have closed across the state, resulting in some communities and towns that no longer have a local newspaper. It may not make sense to require these municipalities to take out notices in the statewide papers, but L.D. 2042 as removes the requirement in its entirety, instead placing a condition that a municipality place the notice containing all the pertinent information on its own website.
Public notices do provide some level of support on a financial basis to this newspaper, and should the requirement go away, we hope the towns would still see us as an important resource and continue to advertise.
If you believe that public notices should remain, please contact members of the Committee on State and Local Government and let them know. We hope that this bill receives a report of ought not to pass from the committee.
To read the full text of the bill or submit testimony, go to tinyurl.com/c6x458kz.
