by Curt Kovener
It’s time to debunk the myth of the financial burden advertising public notices places on local government units.
The cost is the No. 1 cited reason given by those who lobby the legislature for local government associations when testifying for the elimination of the publication requirement for a specific public notice or all public notices.
They don’t say the interests of legal due process or government transparency will be better served through the elimination. They can’t because they know the chances average Hoosiers will ever see the notices on their government websites are slim and none. And perhaps keeping you, as a newspaper reader, in the dark about what they spend is what they really seek.
So it comes down to cost as their argument.
Counties are the governmental units that pay newspapers the most on public notices informing you of how much they spend or want to. So let’s look at what two counties spent in 2020 with the Crothersville Times.
Jackson County spent $2,968.46 and Scott County spent $2,024.48 last year keeping you informed.
To put those numbers in perspective, Jackson County had total receipts of $120,042,903 according to the 2020 Annual Financial Report, while spending .0000247% of their receipts keeping you informed in your local newspaper.
Scott County reported receipts of $58,735,228 on their 2020 AFR which meant they spent .0000344% of their income keeping you informed.
That’s just for counties; cities, towns, townships, and schools pay an even smaller percentage to keep you informed.
And to put those numbers in perspective, if you earned $100,000 a year, you would have spent, proportionally, $2.47 in you lived in Jackson County and $3.44 if you lived in Scott County.
And your state legislators think that is an onerous amount.
The Hoosier State Press Association continues to fight legislation that would move publication of public notices from newspapers to posting on government websites, continuing to make arguments for government transparency and how the public will never see the legal notices on government websites. Township units of government in our two county coverage area do not even have a website onto which to post their notices.
The legislators’ cost argument against publication is a weak point for Hoosiers who value government transparency. Nearly two-thirds of adult Hoosiers said in an American Opinion Research survey in 2017 that notices should be published in their local newspapers even when told it could cost the government unit several thousand dollars.