California Legal Notice Bill Gets It Right. AB 642 Allows Online News Organizations To Compete With Printed Newspapers for Public Notices

HAT TIP: LEGAL NOTICE ONLINE

 

California Legal Notice Bill Gets It Right. AB 642 Allows Online News Organizations To Compete With Printed Newspapers for Public Notices.

California Assemblyman Anthony Rendon may be new to his position, but he could teach a lot to , more experienced legislators about proposing an online public notice bill that makes sense. If the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then there are quite a few crazy legislators. For the past three years as we have covered over 40 proposed online public notice bills, virtually all of them have proposed to let the local government take over the publishing of notices. Each time the newspaper lobby alleges that there should be an independent third party to publish notices; and succeeds in killing the bill. Each time we concede that while the newspapers are correct in advocating for a third party, a possible solution would be to let online news organizations compete for these notices as there are already online news organizations publishing notices and doing a better job than the newspapers.

So while Rendon's bill No. 642 is similar to AB 1902 which was killed in the Assembly's Judicial Committee, maybe it takes a novice to get things done. The dead tree newspaper lobby has already started to use their bully pulpit to lobby against the bill with headlines like "Proposed Legislation Could Kill Newspapers"  Rendon's bill could save California's cash-strapped local governments over $40 million and provide wider distribution of local public notices. That sounds like a good bill.

In order to qualify to compete for legal notices the online publication needs to meet the following criteria:

1. It provides local, national and international with an "intelligence of character."
2. It is updated at regular intervals no less than weekly for a year
3. It has "substantial readership" in the jurisdiction of the notice.
4. It maintains reporting staff in the jurisdiction where the newspaper is seeking adjudication
5. It has maintained coverage of local, national and international news "of a general character" on at least 25 percent of the space available on the home page.
6. It links to public notices on its home page that is "readily accessible ...

There are several online publications staffed by experienced journalists who are can provide this service in California.

 

To read how other states are addressing this issue Click HERE

 

Follow Us on Twitter

News & Record : Editorial, March 28: The people’s business

News & Record : Editorial, March 28: The people’s business: An Example Description

Nice try Allen and Doug but your thinking is muddied by your economic interest and if you would understand that it is 2013 not 1949 then you would understand the problem. But hey even your editor GRITS had this to say this is from your own editor gauger "Equally important has been the digital revolution. Time was when newspapers provided a public service by publishing news-of-record information, because your only other way to view it was to schlep to city hall or the courthouse. Now many governments publish public records at their websites. "

TENNESSEE-Dumbest Legal Notice Bill Yet. Newspapers Must Post Notices Online. Saves No Taxpayer Money and Mandates Nothing New.

HAT TIP LEGAL NOTICE ONLINE

TENNESSEE-Dumbest Legal Notice Bill Yet. Newspapers Must Post Notices Online. Saves No Taxpayer Money and Mandates Nothing New.

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. 
_________________________________________________________________________________

It also looks like our Western North Carolina editors are also chiming in on what we see Senator Dr. Wade and her public notice bill #186. The Cherokee Scout had a editorial on keeping government in sunshine CLICKHERE . In the editorial was this:

"While we hope SB 186 will not pass, there is a compromise proposed in the state House of Representatives that could end the long battle over public notices.

    The soon-to-be-proposed bill would require all public notices continue to be published in a newspaper of paid general circulation and also require all public notices to be published on the newspaper’s Web site as well as on a statewide Web site maintained by the N.C. Press Association. The compromise also provides a 15 percent reduction in price for publishing all notices required by law that run more than once and whose cost is not borne by private parties.

    We urge state Sen. Jim Davis (R-Franklin) to defeat SB 186 and get behind the upcoming House bill. "

As you see from the above editorial and what you see in Tennessee this will save no money and keeps the status quo for the paid monopolistic taxpayer funded money train to newspapers all over this state.

News & Record : Guilford board debates delinquent tax list, NOT ONE MENTION OF THIS BLOG

News & Record : Guilford board debates delinquent tax list: An Example Description

Who has been all over this issue on public notices and the total waste of taxpayers money in the Greensboro News and Record? HERE

Thanks for the non mention of this blog in the article out today even after no reporting of me speaking in front of the Guilford County Commissioners back in January and being on top of this issue bringing it out for all to see.

Greensboro City Council Saves $25,000 Not Giving TREBIC Lobbyist Contract Has Been Pulled

 

The City of Greensboro did the right thing and pulled this item from the city council meeting on

 3-19-2013

 

32. Resolution authorizing contract between the City of Greensboro and TREBIC (Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition) to assist with the Jordan Lake Rules legislation.

(Council District: all) (roll call vote) (Attachment # 32 to Councilmembers)

This issue was talked about a few weeks ago in this blog post titled

$25,000 Greensboro Contract with Unofficial now Official Lobbyist Marlene Sanford President of the Most Powerful Lobbyist Group in the Triad. What a Waste of Taxpayers Money!

Hopefully we can also work on the stacked decks that TREBIC likes to do on plenty of boards and commissons  for example with a blog post titled "RUCO with Stacked Deck on Board from Lobbyist Group Wants State Law To Help Their Cause " CLICKHERE

I am sorry if you cannot find a link to a Greensboro News and Record article in a blog post on triadwatch from the past because they totally wiped out their links when they updated their web site.

 

Davidson News Editor David Boraks Speaks on Public Notice BIll in North Carolina

While looking over the internet in regards to public notices in North Carolina I came along this post from May 14, 2011 on a web site called Global Vue about journalism and technology titled "N.C. legislators turn back effort to take legal notices out of newspapers".

What grabbed me was a comment from the editor of the Davidson News in David Boraks . I made a call to David Boraks and he allowed me to publish his comment which is very relevant today and if we are going to discuss upcoming public notice bills in the State of North Carolina like
 Senate Bill 186. Here is what was said

There’s another angle on this, which hasn’t been discussed much. In some communities, there is no viable print product with wide reach that could reasonably meet the spirit of the legal notice requirements.

Let’s remember the goal: The public notice law is there to ensure that a wide audience of local readers has access to legal notices. While it currently requires print publication, that may be outdated in some places.

In Davidson, the closest qualifying paper is a weekly in the next town over that has little or no circulation in Davidson (I hear it sells a dozen copies here). But it meets the letter of the law. So the town of Davidson spends thousands of dollars a year on ads that nobody in town will ever see. The scare tactics of the print-press lobby just don’t hold water here.

The legislation under consideration would allow towns and counties to use their own websites. That does not strike me as an unreasonable option. One of the newspaper industry arguments against the bill is that some people or some communities may not have internet access and would be cut off. This assumes people have access to the newspaper where the notices are published. (Again, what if your town publishes its legal notices in a publication that doesn’t circulate in your town? Or what if the majority of citizens don’t subscribe to papers?)

Once, newspapers were a reasonable option, because household penetration exceeded 80 or even 100 percent (more than one newspaper per household). But today, newspaper penetration is one-third of that, and in some communities is below 20 percent. Newspapers (the printed version) are no longer the mass medium they once were. In fact, internet penetration in most communities today far exceeds that of newspapers. So it’s not really fair to say that ending newspaper publication of legal notices is the end of the world. A good publicity campaign can ensure that citizens know that their town or county website is the place to go for legal notices.

There also may be other options. Instead of fighting to keep an outdated law that protects legacy print media, we as a new industry should be pushing for a law that opens this up to legitimate community-based online sources. For many newspapers, online sites now have more readers than print products. We should be fighting for a law that requires online notices on general interest local websites. This could include the websites of daily newspapers, weeklies, etc. (Of course what’s missing right now, though, are standards for what amount of web traffic would be required and how it should be measured.)

Of course I have a vested interest: I publish a daily online news website in our town. According to our traffic numbers, we reach a large percentage of households in Davidson, and we could be a viable alternative for legal notices. But that’s not allowed under the current law and would not be required under the proposed legislation in NC right now. And it’s not clear whether the town would choose to post legals on our site.

If the newspaper lobby would consider adapting to a new local information reality, one that includes online, we’d still have strong arguments to make. The most important would be to address the question of whether town or county websites are adequate. In Davidson, town leaders acknowledge that DavidsonNews.net reaches more readers than the town website. If the test were who reaches the most local citizens, our site would be the logical solution. I’d love to see a bill with language that requires online publication and, if available, in an online community publication that meets (yet to be determined) traffic standards.
_____________________________________________________________________

Great points by David Boraks and in the future hopefully more indviduals like David will be at the table talking about new and better ways to get public notices out to the masses and maybe along the way save taxpayers in this state money that does not need to be spent on the paid newspaper publication of public notices.

Online Notice Bill Discussed in Maryland Legislature. $6 million -$9 million Could Be Saved

HAT TIP: Legal Notice Blog

Online Notice Bill Discussed in Maryland Legislature. $6 million -$9 million Could Be Saved

HB 1136 which would allow municipalities to publish legal notices on their own web sites was proposed Feb. 8 and was discussed in a hearing February 28. The bill, by our estimations, could save aggregately $6-$9 million every year. If privately funded notices like foreclosure notices, name changes, litigation and licenses were allowed to be published online, savings would increase to almost $20 million.

"There has been a steady Celine in newspaper readership in the past several decades while at the same time there has been a significant increase in ... access to the internet"

The bill explicitly supports much of what we've been saying:

"Many legal notices published solely in newspapers go unread."

"Many political subdivisions in Maryland will be facing serious fiscal challenges in fiscal 2013."

"Every dollar on public legal notices in newspapers places further stress on local budgets."

Maryland's electorate has been receptive to online legal notices so maybe this bill has a shot. In giving the local governments full control over the creation an publishing of notices, this bill does not, however, solve the lack of independence inherent in having no independent third party whose goal is to publish notices.

Dumbest Legal Notice Bill Yet: Tennessee Forces Newspapers to Post Notices Online. No Money Savings and They're Already Doing It.

HAT TIP: LEGAL NOTICE BLOG

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

Follow Us on Twitter

Did You See the $80,000 Waste of Taxpayers Money in Today's Greensboro News and Record?

Did you happen to see the insert in the Greensboro News and Record today which is the yearly waste of over $96,000 of your taxpayers money. Triadwatch has a public records request for this years final figures from the Guilford County Tax Department which might take a month to get the bills from the Greensboro News and Record, High Point Enterprise, and Carolina Peacemaker with them publishing the tax delinquency of citizens in Guilford County.

Each county and municipality has to by law under North Carolina General Statute 105-369 publish this in a paid newspaper. How many of you actually cared about looking at this insert in today's paper? Some of these North Carolina laws are such a waste of taxpayers money and having public notices in a dying circulation is not the future of public notices in the State of North Carolina.

We do have our newest member of the North Carolina Senate from Guilford County Dr. Trudy Wade introduce her first bill as a primary sponsor Senate Bill #186 which happens to be a public notice bill and hopefully we can get some momentum behind this bill for it to pass and become law.

If there was ever a complete waste of taxpayers money all you needed to do was pick up today's Greensboro News and Record to see the 21 page insert of tax delinquency in Guilford County but one thing that is known is you can see this on a 24-7 basis on the Guilford County Tax Department Web Site . Hopefully you are lucky to pick up today's paper to see this 21 page insert because tomorrow you will not see it at all and as we can also see from the updated Greensboro News and Record web site public notices are so important to them that they did not make one section for public notices be a part of their revised web site. We can see that the Charlotte Observer partnered with legal notice.org  to provide this information for their web content and added a public notices section. Will we see any changes from our local paper? I doubt it.

This blog post brought to you by triad citizens against government waste.

Electronic Notice is Good for Cary,Apex,Garner,Knightdale,and Raleigh is Good for Every other City in this State

North Carolina Senator Dr. Trudy Wade is a primary sponsor of Senate Bill #186 in regards to public notices in the State of North Carolina. What makes this bill so significant is that we have other cities that have enacted local bills in the past to allow them to have electronic notices. For example way back in 2003 Raleigh and Lake Waccamaw had this bill passed

SESSION LAW 2003-161

SENATE BILL 292

AN ACT AUTHORIZING THE CITY OF RALEIGH AND THE TOWN OF LAKE
WACCAMAW TO USE ELECTRONIC MEANS TO PROVIDE PUBLIC

NOTICE FOR CERTAIN PUBLIC HEARINGS.

The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:

SECTION 1.  

 

Section 22 of the Charter of the City of Raleigh, being Chapter
1184 of the 1949 Session Laws, as amended, is amended by adding the following new

subsection:

"(87) Electronic Notice of Hearings. The City Council may adopt ordinances

providing that notice of public hearings may be given through electronic means,

including, but not limited to, the City's Internet site. Ordinances adopted pursuant to this

section shall not supersede any State law that requires notice by mail to certain classes

of people or the posting of signs on certain property and shall not alter the publication

schedule for any public notice."

SECTION 2. The governing body of the Town of Lake Waccamaw may
adopt ordinances providing that notice of public hearings may be given through

electronic means, including, but not limited to, the Town's Internet site. Ordinances

adopted pursuant to this section shall not supersede any State law that requires notice by

mail to certain classes of people or the posting of signs on certain property and shall not

alter the publication schedule for any public notice.

SECTION 3. This act is effective when it becomes law.
 

In the General Assembly read three times and ratified this the 5

th day of June,
2003.
______________________________________________________________________

Then we also have another bill that was passed in 2007 in Senate Bill #1579  which allowed the towns of Apex, Cary, Garner and Knightdale to have the means of using electronic notices .

These local cities are saving taxpayers money by having the ability to use their own local web site to publish public notices. It is time for every other city and county to also have this ability to do the same thing. What is good for these cities is good for the whole State of North Carolina.

$25,000 Greensboro Contract with Unofficial now Official Lobbyist Marlene Sanford President of the Most Powerful Lobbyist Group in the Triad. What a Waste of Taxpayers Money!

 

 

During the City of Greensboro meeting on March  5, 2013 at the complete end of the agenda,Greensboro City Manager Denise Turner Roth wanted the council to sign into a contract with the president of the Triad Real Estate Building Industry Coalition(TREBIC) Marlene Sanford for a total waste of taxpayers money for $25,000 you can see the contract at end of blog post. Here is a link to the video of the back and forth on this wasteful government spending CLICKHERE  and thanks to Council member Tony Wilkins at end of discussion to say "WHOA WHOA WHOA" we need to hold off till next meeting. It was also amazing to see in video that Councilwomen Yvonne Johnson with the help of one of the founders of the TREBIC CARTEL Mayor Perkins bring a motion to pass this without even seeing the contract with Marlene Sanford, unbelievable.

 

There is no reason for the City of Greensboro to hire this unofficial now official lobbyist Marlene Sanford for $25,000 because she has been working for years on this issue of Jordan Lake Rules as a unofficial lobbyist for the TREBIC CARTEL. Why would you waste taxpayers monies when she is getting paid handsomely by the most powerful unofficial lobbyist group in Guilford County . Let's not forget that the TREBIC CARTEL was unofficially lobbying the state to deny the citizens of all of Greensboro the right to Protest Petition .

 

Let's do a little timeline on just how long Marlene Sanford has been a official lobbyist at the State of North Carolina for TREBIC. According to the lobbyist web site CLICKHERE , she just filed on February 26, 2013 one week before the Greensboro City Council meeting on March 5, 2013 which came out of left field from the City Manager who wants to pay a person who has been working on this issue already.Who at Greensboro City staff thought this was a brilliant idea?You can also see from the lobbying web site that it has been a very longtime since she has registered with the State of North Carolina as a lobbyist CLICKHERE  which is a total of 13 year break from finally becoming a lobbyist when we have known for a very longtime what she was but has been doing plenty of politicking under the table. Yes! Weekly did a great front page article titled "The Unofficial Lobbyist TREBIC & The Building Industry from October 17, 2012 CLICKHERE. 

 

You can also see from the picture above that Marlene Sanford was unofficially lobbying the State of North Carolina representatives at the Greensboro delegation forum on Presidents day February 18, 2013 well before she filed as a lobbyist while current session was going on. The picture was on the front page of the Rhino Times that week.

 

Let's not also forget that the Greensboro Partnership has a lobbyist in Jason Cannon who is paid by the chamber but probably with a little digging could find out that the taxpayers of Greensboro with a pass through are footing this bill for a lobbyist at the state level.

 

Doug Clark from the Greensboro News and Record chimed in as well on this issue pointing out two big reasons for not hiring TREBIC as a lobbyist

they are

 

"One is that TREBIC takes positions on city issues, making Sanford an advocate before the council. Her relationship can be adversarial when TREBIC opposes city policies. Adversary sometimes, paid lobbyist sometimes? No, that’s not a good relationship.

 

The second reason is more basic. Greensboro doesn’t need to pay anyone to argue on its behalf regarding the Jordan Lake rules. The legislature is already very friendly toward the city’s position. Phil Berger, the powerful leader of the state Senate, represents Greensboro and has already indicated his support for amending the rules. When you have Phil Berger plus most other Guilford County legislators on your side (Pricey Harrison and Alma Adams excepted), you’re throwing money away to hire a lobbyist."

 

Two very valid points to make and if you see in contract it looks like the they have routine expenses you are going to pay for in transportation, telephone,postage,copies,and meals. It must be nice to have the taxpayers pay for meals to a lobbyist who is probably paid very well by her own non profit in TREBIC CARTEL.

 

If you would like to send a message to the Greensboro City Council to not waste taxpayers money on a lobbyist who is already getting paid to lobby please contact your Greensboro City Council.  CLICKHERE

 

 This message brought to you by the Triad Citizens Against Government Waste.

 

 

$25,000 Trebic Contract With City of Greensboro by

N.C. Senator Dr. Wade introduces Public Notice Bill #186 in Regards to Publication by Counties and Cities in North Carolina

North Carolina Senator Dr. Trudy Wade introduces a bill today in regards to public notices for counties and cities in the State of North Carolina . Here is a link to the bill and also at the end of this blog post will be the whole bill in a scribd version CLICKHERE.

Public Notice laws in the State of North Carolina needed to upgrade to the computer age . Seeing a bill like this will help in this process. I would like to thank Senator Wade for introducing this important bill to save the taxpayers of this state millions of dollars . We will see how this bill moves through the Senate and will update you on how the N.C. Press Association will cry foul on this bill and it is time to see the taxpayers assisted paid papers money train go bye bye.

________________________________________________________________________________

Senator Dr. Wade Public Notice Bill by