A disturbing trend is emerging among some Texas home-rule cities to make it harder for you to learn how your tax dollars are spent and to follow important issues at City Hall.
Lately, some cities have been using home-rule charter-amendment elections asking voters to approve posting legal notices conveniently found in a newspaper to an online site only.
For decades, state law has provided guidelines that protect and preserve the public’s right to know by requiring government legals be printed in a newspaper where everyone can see them.
Don’t buy the argument this measure saves taxpayers’ money.
Texas statutes call for newspapers to print public notices at the lowest published classified rate, so residents are getting plenty of bang for the buck.
Newspapers and the legal notices they print are reliable, portable, shareable, permanent, tamper-proof and withstand the test of time.
If cities move notices to online exclusively, that data can be erased, hacked, altered or retroactively changed if it doesn’t fit a changing narrative at City Hall, unlike the legal notices of city business that appear in the timeless format of a printed newspaper.
Printed legal notices keep government officials honest.
What’s more, newspapers publish the notices both in print and online.
Traditionally, newspaper readership — both print and online — outpaces any other medium and makes broad connections appealing to those wanting to reach a mass audience. Engagement with a newspaper’s online resources is usually much higher than the analytics of a government website. Legals in the pages of a newspaper are the most trusted, verified and digestible sources of information residents need to know about, including annexations, bids, zoning changes, school attendance-zone revisions, tax increases, bond issues and large governmental purchases or projects such as landfills that could have an environmental impact.
Try reading all of that on a tiny phone screen. You’ll get a headache.
Newspapers and the legal notices they print provide an independent, third-party system free from government interference to hold the powerful accountable. Printed notices cannot be manipulated, unlike digital databases.
In addition, online governmental notices are notoriously often hard to find, even requiring several deep clicks to access the desired information.
Also, the fees for legals published in a newspaper help keep a local business thriving — in this case, your trusted local newspaper.
If voters in the future encounter such an initiative on the ballot, they should vote “no” — don’t let your city turn off the lights and leave you in the dark about your taxes and the “people’s business.” Keep legal notices in your paper.
Thomas Edwards
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