In yesterday’s column, everyone’s favorite Star Ledger reporter who was famously torn into by Governor Christie to being too sensitive, Tom Moran, let slip a little secret that he’s probably been holding on to for a while. Newspapers are failing in New Jersey and almost everywhere else. He has found a scapegoat, and its his favorite foil.
According to Moran and Star Ledger publisher Richard Vezza, who I saw testify about this bill before the Assembly Commerce Committee, Governor Christie and South Jersey political kingpin George Norcross are behind this dastardly bill that will be “the final blow” to newspapers throughout the state. Does anyone else see this strategy for what it is? Here are the steps.
- Pick a Republican villan
- Pick a Democrat villan
- Act like they have a common goal
- ??????
- Kill the bill, and keep costing the taxpayers money
Its not the most thought out plan, truth be told, but its the best Tom can come up with right now. This might offer some insight and explanation into why the papers are failing in the first place. A total lack of innovation.
Moran claims that the bill will take away the watchdogs of New Jersey and its dark intention is to kill the newspapers simply because Governor Christie and George Norcross do not like them. Which is a really nice narrative that will continue to not sell papers. The real story behind the bill? Try not to laugh as you read this, Save Jerseyans. A2082 brings an outdated law into the 21st century. Currently the law states that municipalities must post legal notices for a certain period of time and with certain content in the newspaper with the widest circulation in that jurisdiction. They must pay prescribed rates to post such notices in the paper. This bill will now take that newspaper requirement and make it permissive, but only if the municipality creates a website where all future legal notices will be posted. This website must be guaranteed operational 98% of the time on a continuous basis and the government must provide a free printed copy of the notices if a resident requests one. The website is required to have basic search functionality to improve content accessibility. Also, a town cannot opt into this new method unless it can guarantee that there is free public Internet access available within its jurisdiction. Finally, the notices webpage must be prominently linked on the municipality’s main website. Once all of these requirements are met, a municipality can save whatever money it can by no longer posting in the newspaper.
Let me repeat a crucially important fact. This law is completely voluntary. No municipality must establish this website. No municipality must stop posting in the paper. The two are not mutually exclusive, and neither method is favored over the other. The only thing that changes is that towns will be able to make a decision based on their own finances and their own projections as to how much can be saved. This blows a hole in Moran’s biggest point.
Moran claims that there are no projected cost savings to municipalities from this bill. He slams the bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman Bramnick, for saying that it will save $70 million. In this case his criticism is well placed. Bramnick’s number does a appear to be made up. However, any number that Moran comes up with will be suspect as well, and he is almost just as speculative. How do I know this? Because as I write this I am looking to the NJ Office of Legislative Services Fiscal Estimate. OLS did not have the ability to adequately score this bill because local governments do not list legal notice spending as individual line items in their budgets. There is no available estimate coming from anywhere credible or unbiased.
Moran then asserts that towns will actually spend more money because they will need to establish a website and then hire additional employees to update the site and ensure that it complies with the law. This might be the least impressive argument he makes. All municipalities in the state of New Jersey are currently required to have a website to, at the very least, post their budgets from the last three consecutive years for public viewing. The infrastructure is there. If a municipality is already paying for the creation and maintenance of their website, it will not even be marginally more expensive to add a page just to post simple legal notices. Anyone who has ever used the internet, or anyone with half a brain, knows this is true. And the idea that more employees would need to be hired is ridiculous. Someone in the municipal hall is currently handling the legal notices going to the paper. Someone is drafting them and someone is making sure that they get to the publisher on time to comply with the law. All this permissive law would do is allow that person to have more direct control over when a notice gets posted and also the ability to edit notices, in case of mistake, after they had been posted. There is the possible concern that the township clerk or whoever happens to be in charge of this work may not be computer savvy enough to write out a notice and post it to the internet. Well that would be unfortunate, but it probably means that it is time for this municipal employee to go. It is the year 2011. Municipalities need to keep up with more efficient forms of technology and keep up with trends of where people are getting their news. If your employees cannot follow instructions to post what is in reality no more complicated than a twitter update, then its time to get some new employees.
Finally, the social justice argument just had to be made. Moran claims that poorer individuals will not be able to access the information if it is online. This would be a really great argument, if it were based in any sort of reality. The bill requires that free public internet access be offered for a municipality to take advantage of this law to save money. Any city or town who realizes that access would be a problem for its residents would have the option to not take advantage of the law and continue to force their residents to look to outdated and overpriced newspapers for their notices. Which is exactly how the Ledger seems to like it.
Any savings will need to be determined on an individual basis. If the town determines that it will not save any money, then, shockingly enough, they will opt to not create the website and sustain the added cost. If they determine that it will save money, then they will do it and be able to pass the savings on to the taxpayer. In a year when so many towns are struggling with their addiction to state aid, any savings to help stay under the Cap 2.0 should be welcome.
Just for fun, lets look at Moran’s numbers that helped him arrive at his newspaper doomsday scenario. Newspapers take in $20 million per year with roughly $8 million coming directly from local taxpayers. These rates also account for 2.5% of the revenue at the Star Ledger, which hardly seems like a “final blow” to me. My advice to the Ledger is to take the space you would have previously allocated to local notices and find someone who actually wants to advertise in your paper. Charge them the same amount, or even charge them more. You stand to gain from this law! Stop wasting time trying to stay on what essentially amounts to taxpayer assistance to keep yourselves afloat. This has nothing to do with Chris Christie or George Norcross being mad at you. It has everything to do with finding every possible savings for taxpayers during this fiscal crisis and ongoing recession. If that has to come at the expense of 2.5% of your revenue then so be it. The state is making cuts, the towns are making cuts, if you want to stay around, you can do the same.
Well written and informed piece. I can just offer an example of a site that solves this issue:
Our local governments are broke. In a perfect world we would publish notices on radio because there is an underserved part of the community that can not read. But that would be ridiculously expensive. We have to make choices based on cost. Luckily there is a solution. Look at this site http://free-public-notice.com . It is FREE-You don’t have to subscribe to a newspaper to receive the notices THE NOTICES COME TO YOU-. No more hunting for notices in the back of the newspaper. They e-mail alerts based on preference of both type of notice and locality. (“Please e-mail me whenever there is a zoning hearing in Camden". Set it up once and forget it. -IMMEDIATE-The local government doesn’t have to wait for the notice to be published in the newspaper for it to be published on line. The government employees can upload it straight to the site. -BETTER DISCLOSURE-They link to the original documents (zoning maps, bid specifications, providing way more information than a notice in print. In addition, they map to the localities-DOCUMENTATION- they provide affidavits of publishing. -GREEN- No cutting down trees to publish these notices. -PERMANENCE- The notices stay on line forever. In newspapers, they are published in a few editions and then are gone. COST SAVINGS- The local governments will save 90% of what they spend in notices. The newspaper’s publish the notices for only a few weeks.This issue is playing out all over the country. Read http://legal-notice.org. Newspapers do a lot of things really well. But so do a lot of businesses. It doesn’t mean as taxpayers we should overspend for a service that is now inferior
I hope Governor Christie is not part of Norcross in any way. That will be he biggest down fall in his public career. Too many people running for President will use that connection to take him down. He must do something about Norcross by having him turned into the proper authorities for the crimes he has committed or else an investigation may connect dots. Please don't get involved with Norcross. He is in major trouble.