Legislation RIP: Public notice bills among axed legislation
(scroll down for a chart of bills that did not pass)
Several bills did not make it out of committee, not even to see the light of day in a further study or commission.
Some of those bills were bad, from VCOG’s perspective, and we will not mourn their passing.
Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, proposed HB1879 that would have allowed localities of 100,000 or more people to publish public notices in a newspaper or on a locality’s Web site or on the locality’s public access cable television or radio station.
Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, proposed HB2355, which would have applied to all Virginia localities and would have given them the opportunity to choose two of four methods of publication: (1) newspapers and their Web sites; (2) a locality’s Web site; (3) a locality’s public access cable television or radio stations; or (4) a locality’s subscription-based text-message, e-mail or phone-notification system.
Lobbyists representing local governments argued it was costing the localities too much to buy space in the papers for the notices, a point refuted by the Virginia Press Association’s Ginger Stanley, who noted that the amount Chesapeake paid for public notices represented just .0027 percent of the city’s more than $900 million budget.
The Coalition argued that by removing newspapers as the guaranteed go-to resource for public notices, broad segments of the public would be left out: those who cannot afford cable TV or Internet connections, those who are scared of new technology, and those who are not actively engaged in their governments enough to sign up for notifications. Elderly citizens fall into all of these categories in disproportionate numbers.
VCOG acknowledged that alternative means of publication are in the not-too-distant future. But, we argued, before that can happen, there must be some sort of transition period where citizens are notified about what forms of notification will be used for what type of action and when. VCOG noted that even after an intense yearlong public and private advertising campaign to inform citizens about the switch from analog to digital television, the federal government still had to extend the deadline for citizens who were either unaware of the switch or needed more time to adjust.