As a newspaper, we cannot comment on LD 1878 – which proposes to end publishing government notices – without pointing out our obvious conflict of interest: notices are a newspaper revenue source paid by taxpayers.

LD 1878 was introduced to move paid legal notices out of daily newspapers and post them free online.

Rep. Terry Hayes, D-Buckfield, has put this bill forth as emergency legislation, to allow towns, cities, counties and the state to realize potential savings faster, though as of this writing, no fiscal note was attached to the bill. A public hearing on LD 1878 has been set for May 11, before the State and Local Government Committee.

There’s no drumbeat or outcry to change public notice provisions, especially when the proposed savings from the policy are yet uncalculated. Hayes’ bill would merely replace an information policy that’s been effective for decades.

As written, LD 1878 would mandate the creation of a state Web site to warehouse public notices, and a toll-free telephone number where citizens can request mailings of what’s online. And what would that cost? Setting up the site, hiring staff to respond to information requests and mailing out paper copies of notices?

Under Hayes’ plan, newspaper notices would be phased out by midyear 2008, replaced by the Web.

Is this better? Maine’s household penetration of Internet access is about 58 percent, according to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, and lags the nation in high-speed Internet access. The demographics of Internet users, and newspaper readers, also show wide disparities.

Online notices wouldn’t be seen by more of the public, the only reason to consider changing the policy.

Valid criticism of public notices do exist; newspapers have been urged to present notices more prominently, while government has been accused of using vague language in notices, and obscuring important information in the process.

Addressing these concerns is a better idea. Scrapping public notices in newspapers for the Web, by comparison, would simply create a massive bureaucratic solution to a non-pressing problem and shut down one source of information the public depends on to monitor government business.

The state spends about $400,000 annually to publish legal notices in all publications, statewide. The Sun Journal’s portion is miniscule, at best, so the financial impact of this bill if enacted, on this newspaper, would be limited.

It’s our business of informing the public, and acting as a watchdog on government, that would be hindered most by removing notices to a state-managed Web site. As an accessory plan, to complement newspaper notices, Hayes’ bill would make for a fine, aggressive investment in improving public information.

Instead, it tries to fix a system that isn’t broken.

Conflict or not, it’s bad policy.