Dumbest Legal Notice Bill Yet: Tennessee Forces Newspapers to Post Notices Online. No Money Savings and They're Already Doing It.
We've been covering legal notice bills for over 2 years and thought we've seen every possible bill proposed. The State Senate of Tennessee further wasted legislators time and taxpayers money by approving Senate Bill 461, sponsored by State Senator Ken Yager which changes absolutely nothing. There are no savings for the cash-strapped municipalities because the newspapers continue to charge outrageous rates for print notices in newspapers with dwindling circulations. The Newspapers of Tennessee already publish legal notices on a little used website and many of them already publish them on their own websites.
So then why bring up the bill? Because newspapers in the future want to be able to defend their franchise against online-only public notice bills by saying "why change the bill, it's in the law that we already publish notices online?"
Over $1 million per year is wasted in Tennessee publishing legal notices in print.
Surprisingly (ha ha) the Tennessee Newspaper Association supports this bill because they continue to be subsidized by local governments placing notices in their newspapers at an absurd markup.
To read how other states are addressing this issue Click HERE
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