A Florida House panel is moving to revisit rules on how local governments can post legal notices and advertisements so that such public information would no longer be required to be published in local newspapers.
The Florida House’s Judiciary Committee earlier this month passed a proposed committee bill (PCB) 14-5 that undoes many of the provisions of House Bill 35, which the governor signed into law last year after negotiations between lawmakers and the state’s newspaper industry. That bill expanded the number of print newspapers that could publish legal notices and allowed local governments to publish them on newspaper websites and a repository website managed by the Florida Press Association.
This year’s bill, however, would go further in allowing local governments more publication options at potentially lower costs. Under the latest bill’s provisions, a local agency could publish notices of public meetings and related information on a county-run website under certain conditions.
“I’m still perplexed at the fact that we are once again fighting this public notice bill on what we believed to be a good compromise between the legislature and the newspaper industry (in the) last legislative session,” Jim Fogler, president and CEO of the Florida Press Association, told the Florida Record in an email.
Newspapers are in the business of informing the public about government actions, Fogler said, and transparency is key when it comes to the actions of elected officials.
“We also thought that we all agreed, we needed to give the marketplace time to see if our legislation worked (not just 30 days), which brings more players to the table creating more competition, more notice to Floridians to protect the interest of the taxpayer and most of all keep the government’s activities in the public (eye),” he said.
Florida TaxWatch, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, supports the Florida Press Association’s position, arguing that requiring public notices to be posted in local newspapers of record gives citizens better access to information on public meetings and votes.
An analysis of the latest bill by legislative staff members says the measure won’t have a fiscal impact on the state government but that the impact on local government finances is uncertain.
Supporters of the change have said the current legal notices rules provide a dying industry (local print media) with government subsidies.