N.C. Press Association Monopoly Protection Act Bill Has Been Filed by Award Winning Reps

The 2014 winner of the N.C Press Association Lassiter Award N.C. Senator Norman Sanderson has now filed a bill S#129 titled Legal Notices/Require Internet Publication. which needs to have a new title " N.C. Press Association Monopoly Protection Act.

When will our North Carolina General Assembly start to understand that this is the year 2015 not 1949 it is time to revamp all public notices save taxpayer money and let local and county government put these notices on their own web sites. Having a state law which states that public notices have to go through "paid subscribers" which means paid papers is ludicrous.

Let me give you an example right here in Guilford County. We have a weekly publication which is free not a paid paper like the local Greensboro News and Record called the North West Observer. This weekly has 100% distribution to every household in Oak Ridge, Summerfield and Stokesdale. By law we make these 3 cities have to go through the Greensboro News and Record which has only a 20% distribution. So as you can see a weekly paper with 100% distribution should be the best place to have public notices to their constituents but by law they have to use the Greensboro News and Record at 20%, this makes no sense.

Hopefully we will se some drastic changes on the state level in regards to Public Notices but as we see from this past week with N.C. Senator Sanderson filed the bill above, we also have on the N.C. House side Rep. Marilyn Avila. She filed the same bill in the house side in H#156

 

 

 

a quote from Wilson Times on award

Rep. Marilyn Avila, a Wake County Republican, accepted the William C. Lassiter First Amendment award during the North Carolina Press Association's annual meeting last month

"The award -- which is among the highest honors the press association bestows -- is named for William C. Lassiter, an open-government attorney and former general counsel for the newspaper trade group.

"We don't give the William C. Lassiter First Amendment Award every year, and there's a reason for that," High said. "A true champion for the right to know doesn't come along every year. When someone does rise above the fray, we honor and celebrate that.""

So for the past 2 years the N.C. Press Association has bestowed this award to the 2 State Representatives who filed a bill which should be titled N.C. Press Association Monopoly Protection Act.

Time for drastic changes in our Public Notice laws and hopefully will see these 2 bills collect dust and never see the light of day.

 

Rhino Times Finally Gets On Board With Public Notice for Weekly Papers as a Part of State Law

This past week Rhino Times 2-12-2015 in it's Short Stack section of paper had this to say,


"The Greensboro City Council is obsessed with Senate Bill 36 which will mean some of them will have to move if they want to get reelected to the City Council.  The way they talk you’d think it was the end of the world.
 
But there are other bills being introduced down in Raleigh that are important to me.  It appears that several bills will be introduced to end the monopoly that mainstream newspapers have on legal advertising.  When the laws were passed it made sense to require legal notices be placed in a major newspaper in the area, increasing the likelihood that interested parties would find them.
 
But today there are so many other ways to advertise.  Free weeklies is one of my favorites, but there is also radio and television, billboards, web pages, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Vine.  And while I admit I don’t know what a couple of those things are, I know that putting information on our website works and is really inexpensive.
 
Why should the state require advertisements be placed in mainstream newspapers?  It doesn’t make sense, in particular because the mainstream newspapers benefitting from the law are mainly liberal and the legislature is now run by Republicans."

We also had a Guilford County Delegation meeting last week on 2-12-2015 where Triadwatch spoke in regards to this issue of allowing non paid subscriber papers in Guilford County to be allowed to be a part of public notices in North Carolina like weekly papers triad city beat, yes weekly, rhino times and Northwest Observer. Here is a link to the video and me speaking from the 5;45 minute mark to the 7;32 minute mark here is the link

Hopefully we will see a local delegate from Guilford County propose a bill to allow the weekly papers to be a part of the North Carolina public notice laws. One aspect that is very relevant is that now you need to pay for a paper to see the public notice but if this law were to come to fruition then this part of public notices will be free to all the citizens by going to a kiosk to pick up their free weekly paper to see the public notice. It will be interesting to see if the lobbyist for the N.C. Press Association will fight these bills to allow the weekly papers a part of the public notice pie.