Tell Gaskill 'no' on legal bill

Information. We all seek it. We use it to better our lives or to make day-to-day decisions. Legal notices, the ones where city, county and school district information is presented, is part of the information the Courier and other newspapers provide to you.

That information, be it employee salaries, expense listings or minutes from the latest meeting, is important and our readers have said so.

They want to know where their taxpayer dollars are being spent. It’s a way to hold elected and appointed officials accountable while they are in office.

But right now in the works, House Study Bill 565 is being discussed at the Statehouse. The proposal would essentially eliminate legal notices in the newspaper, and instead, place all that information online.

Some argue, including state Rep. Mary Gaskill, D-Ottumwa, that posting legal notices is far less costly than print advertising.

But the Courier and the membership of the Iowa Newspaper Association vehemently disagree.

Setting up and properly maintaining, updating and archiving a reliable Web site costs thousands of dollars. Loading material, putting it in the right places, building in adequate search engines, managing the files, guarding against hackers and archiving the material all cost money.

Surveys conducted by the INA and organizations representing local governments show the total that any Iowa city/school/county spent on all public notices in recent years averages less than 1/20th of 1 percent of the local government’s annual budget. And most, if not all, of these costs would remain if public notices were distributed properly on the Internet or in city newsletters. The cost per thousand Iowans reading the notices would skyrocket since the survey shows clearly that few Iowans will go to the trouble of searching for this information on the Internet.

Even if posting notices on government Web sites were cost-free, it would be a waste of time if Iowans didn’t see them.

And that’s the main issue.

A 2009 statewide readership survey conducted by Newton Marketing and Research of Norman, Okla., concluded that more than 87 percent of Iowans read their local newspaper. Some 71 percent of Iowans believe public notices should be published in newspapers.

The Iowa Newspaper Association spends tens of thousands of dollars a year putting all public notices published in the state on a single, searchable Internet Web site. If you Google “Iowa public notices," the search engine will show you that the most popular site for this information is the INA’s site, which was created by newspapers to add value to public notices at no extra cost to local governments.

Even though this Web site is the most popular Iowa public notice Web site on the Internet, few Iowans take the time to look for public notices there (or anyplace else on the Internet). According to Google Analytics, from Nov. 1, 2008, to Oct. 31, 2009, the number of “absolute unique visitors” (different people) who went to the site was 20,000. That pales in comparison to the number of different Iowans who read public notices in newspapers in 2009.

The total circulation of Iowa newspapers is 1,284,869. Total readership is 2,569,738. The 2009 Newton research shows that 55.5 percent of those readers, or 1,426,204 Iowans, read public notices usually or sometimes. That means the ratio of readership of public notices in newspapers compared to the most robust public notice Web site is 71:1.

More than 32 percent of Iowans said they would “not at all be likely” to read the notices on the Internet. In fact, more than half of Iowans (57.4 percent) say they have never gone to any local government Web site for any kind of information.

Also, when a newspaper publishes a public notice, in effect the newspaper is acting in the role of a third-party verifier or auditor of the notice. The newspaper is responsible for typesetting and preparing the notice for print and is responsible for signing a sworn affidavit of publication once the notice is published. Allowing local governments to put notices on the Web rather than publish them in the newspaper removes those critical verification and auditing roles. How, if challenged, could a governmental agency prove that it timely posted adequate notice on its Web site? Imagine the battles between, say, a community group and a planning commission, with the group saying it didn’t see a hearing notice on the Web site. Does there exist a verifiable affidavit for Web posting?

Our biggest fear is not how this proposal will impact newspapers, rather, we want to make sure local government is transparent and the citizenry is well-informed about what area municipalities, school districts and other government agencies are doing with their taxpayer dollars.

Southern Iowa has a large elderly population. Many of these folks go nowhere near a computer. Yet, they are very interested in what’s going on in City Hall, the county boardroom or at the school district.

The Internet is a great resource, but it’s not always user-friendly, and trying to find governmental legal notices may prove difficult at best.

Contact Rep. Gaskill and other area legislators. Tell them to seriously look at the drawbacks of HSB 565. What little money that may be saved by different governmental entities is not enough justification to keeping Iowans in the dark about what’s going on in their backyards.