Wyoming legislators have been working this fall on further erosion of public notices in newspapers.
This item is available in full to subscribers.
To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, or purchase a new subscription.
If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free website account and connect your subscription to it by clicking here.
If you are a digital subscriber with an active, online-only subscription then you already have an account here. Just reset your password if you've not yet logged in to your account on this new site.
Otherwise, click here to view your options for subscribing.
Please log in to continue |
Wyoming legislators have been working this fall on further erosion of public notices in newspapers.
This time the target is the publication of the salaries of local government employees. A bill changing state law so that those no longer have to be published is in the works. A committee passed it in September.
As it stands now, our taxpayer-funded municipal governments, county governments and public school districts must, at the very least, publish a list of positions and how much the people who hold them are paid. In some cases the actual names of the jobholders must be published, as well.
Numerous other public notice requirements already have been eliminated. There is a lot less public notice advertising than their used to be. Yes, of course, that hurts the newspapers.
The superficial justification always is money. The governments claim it simply costs too much money to inform the public of its own business. The advent of the Internet over the past quarter century has given public entities a new battering ram against public notice advertising via arguments that this information will simply be put on a “local government website” instead of in the newspapers -- knowing full well that far fewer people would ever see the information. And that satisfies a deeper motivation: secrecy.
But with Wyoming’s fiscal profile in tatters, those who would do away with public notice advertising for reasons of secrecy feel they have a stronger argument based on money. This time around, they feel they can simply ignore the service and accountability consequences of their proposed changes and concentrate solely on the financial aspect -- and be more likely to get away with it.
Public notice advertisements are required by law. The laws requiring them were initiated and passed by the Wyoming Legislature. The newspapers didn’t push for them. They were created to help ensure at least the appearance of proper, transparent, responsible and accountable government.