Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Sonoran Alliance had a piece about HB 2253, which would eliminate the requirement that government notices be printed in newspapers. They, like the author of the bill, Andy Biggs, start by claiming that this is about saving state agencies money. But, they move into territory which helps to confirm my worries about the motives behind this bill:

But in addition to being good policy it is great politics as it would allow Republicans to inflict significant damage on our political enemies in the print media. And now is the perfect time to push this–with everyone in a budget crunch, saving money is even more attractive than at other times.

Incredibly, our REPUBLICAN Legislature seems to be allowing this rare opportunity to slip through its fingers–the bill failed House Government on a 4 to 5 vote. Now the bill’s sponsor has apparently capitulated to he Arizona Republic and the other forces of darkness–the bill has been amended to have a worthless study committee report back in nearly three years.

Yeah, great. This bill should have been passed because newspapers should be punished for being too liberal. Writing legislation specifically to eviscerate the media for not supporting your agenda comes dangerously close to authoritarianism.

But other than that, the notion that this is “good policy” is suspect. Yes, it saves the government money. But does it actually advance the cause of open and accessible government, which is the reason for this policy in the first place.

The author of the piece calls the public notice requirement “archaic.” I’m assuming that he believes that the internet has, as it has in so many cases, supplanted the need for newspapers in this area. A newspaper, however, carries a certain date of publication and cannot be edited once it is printed. Neither one of these things can be said of something put up on a government website.

Think about this for a minute: you find out that something was acted on at a town council meeting that wasn’t on a published agenda. You can then go back and see it in print and go back and be able to say, “hey, this wasn’t on the agenda according to the public notice published last week.” If you go back and look at the website, there really isn’t a good way of telling if that, in fact, was the agenda as it looked like the previous week.

As the folks at Sonoran Alliance note, the public notices are often in a weird place in the paper. But, what is the alternative? Putting them up in obscure, possibly inaccessible places on a hard to use government website? Also, what constitutes “published” on the web? Having it up for a few hours? A few days?

The current policy of publishing public notices is an easy way of making sure that the decisions of local government are made in the open. If you want to change this policy, come up with a sound alternative and better reasons to do it than an ideological snit.