Idaho legislators balk at government control of information, kill legal notice bill | Opinion
When I owned and ran the Kuna Melba News weekly newspaper several years ago, legal notices were a big deal to us.
Yes, it was a source of revenue, to the tune of about $20,000 to $25,000 per year, or about 10% of our total revenue. But the revenue we derived from legal notices mostly just offset the costs of increasing the number of pages needed to print those legal notices. It wasn’t a major source of revenue for us, and we would have survived without it.
More important was the information that it provided our readers — and me, as I looked closely at those notices each week and learned about upcoming public hearings, water rights applications, requests for proposals and bids, annual budgets, foreclosures and a lot more. A veritable treasure trove of stories important to the public.
I still read the legal notices, arguably my favorite section of the paper.
So I was happy that the annual attempt to allow government agencies in Idaho to publish legal notices online instead of in a newspaper failed again this year on a 9-6 vote in the state House Affairs Committee.
House Bill 33 would have allowed both public and private agencies to publish legal notices electronically on the state controller’s website.
The bill estimated the price tag to include a one-time development cost of $570,000 and ongoing operation costs of $300,000 per year.
The bill’s sponsors estimated that state agencies could save at least $1 million annually in total publication fees, and local government entities could also save at least $1 million annually.
Given that there are an estimated 1,100 taxing districts in Idaho, that means each district averages about $909 per year in publication costs.
Government agencies are required to publish such things as notice of public hearings in advance, annual budgets, requests for proposals and bids for public works projects, planning and zoning hearings for new developments or annexations, major changes to fees, and even placements of cell towers.
Private entities are required, by state law, to publish such things as a name change, public auctions and foreclosures.
I get it. It’s 2025, for Pete’s sake. Isn’t it about time we got rid of this antiquated system of requiring government agencies and members of the public to publish notices in a medium that unquestionably has diminished in scope and scale over the past 20 years?
Apparently not.
Arguments in favor
The arguments in favor sound reasonable: potential cost savings; ability to reach a broader audience online; providing a free, publicly accessible platform for public notices; modernizing the public notice system to align with how people increasingly access information online; and maintaining transparency and accessibility, while offering a more efficient option for local governments to meet legal notice requirements.
But if you take a closer look at the arguments, they start to fall apart.
Cost savings, based on their numbers, come out to about $900 per agency, per year. Of course, this includes mosquito abatement districts and cemetery districts, which might spend $40 per year, while big agencies like Ada County spend thousands of dollars.
In fact, the three Ada County commissioners testified on behalf of the bill.
Arguments against
Arguments against the bill included concerns about government control over both the content and distribution of public notices, potentially reducing transparency, not helping it.
That’s a good point, as newspapers serve as an independent third party making sure things are done right.
Personally, I’ve called out government agencies who started discussing matters not properly noticed in the paper.
Another great point brought up was concern that the bill allows a government agency to decide whether to continue publishing in the newspaper or publish instead with the state-run online legal notices site.
Sounds good, but as Rep. Joe Alfieri, R-Coeur d’Alene, pointed out, that could create confusion for residents not knowing which agency was publishing notices where.
In other words, the city of Melba could publish legal notices in a newspaper, but the Melba school district could be publishing legal notices online.
I know the print operations of newspapers are in decline, but people in rural areas of the state love their local newspaper, and I think many legislators would be surprised to know how many of their constituents actually read the paper cover to cover, including the legal notices — especially folks who don’t like using the internet or don’t have reliable access to it.
Private sector solution
But here’s, really, the biggest argument against the state setting up a website to publish legal notices: The newspapers already do it. For free. They’ve been doing it online since 2012.
It’s at idahopublicnotices.com, run by the Newspaper Association of Idaho.
The newspapers did it themselves, probably seeing the writing on the wall, excuse the pun.
No need for the state to spend $500,000 to set it up, and no need to spend $300,000 per year to maintain it. It’s already done.
So while right now newspapers offer both print and online, the proposal actually would have taken away a mode of communication, not added to it.
I do think there’s some reasonable compromises here. Legal notices are all governed by state statutes, and legislators have the ability to change the laws with respect to what is required to be published, how often, even how much is published.
The days of legal notices running in print eventually will come to an end.
Just not this year.
