Monday, May 14, 2007
LD# 1878
An Act to Generate Savings by Changing Public Notice Requirements

This is an ‘after deadline’ bill that I have submitted, in cooperation with Rep. (Henry) Joy (R), Crystal. The summary of the bill reads, in part:

The bill phases out, over a one-year period and with various notification provisions, the requirement that State Government publish legal or public notices in a newspaper. The change applies to any unit of State Government, including the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, all their respecitve departments or units, and all independent or quasi-independent entities such as boards, commissions or agencies.

The Department of Administrative and Financial Services is required to establish and maintain or cause to be maintained a publicly accessible Internet site on which to post all legal and public notices. In addition, the department is required to establish and maintain a telephone number that allows a person to obtain more information about this change. After June 30, 2009, legal and public notices would no longer be published in newspapers by state government.

The bill also allows municipalities to publich legal notices in a newspaper medium distributed as 3rd class mail if the municipal officers adopt a publication policy. That policy must contain five specific requirements.

It appears that State Government spends in excess of $1 million each year to publish legal/public notices in daily newspapers throughout the state.

When was the last time you read these notices? Did you know that most, if not all, of these are also posted on the Internet? Check out: http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/rules/notices.html These are the rule-making notices published by the Secretary of State’s Office regularly. Publishing just these notices in the newspapers cost us, Maine’s taxpayers, nearly half a million dollars ever year. We believe this is less than half of the overall annual cost to State Government of publishing public notices in the newspapers. Other notices that are published include notice of Legislative Committee meetings, purchasing notices, and requests for proposals from a variety of agencies.

Rep. Joy and I think that it is time to move to Internet publishing as a means of achieving sustainable savings in the State Budget. We are persuaded that this move can be accomplished over a twelve month period, so that this change can be fully implemented by the end of June 2008.

Research has found that Maine’s level of households with Internet access exceeds the number of households subscribing to at least one daily newspaper. Those without Internet access at home often have access at work. All Maine schools and all public libraries throughout the state offer public Internet access. Moving these notices to Internet-only publication will not diminish access to the information the notices contain.

LD# 1878 also provides more flexibility to municipalities regarding how those units of government provide notice to interested parties. If adopted, the savings potential extends to the local property taxpayers, also.

Rep. Joy and I presented this bill to the Joint Standing Committee on State and Local Government on May 11. This Committee will ‘work’ this bill on May 16. You may listen in to the deliberations by pointing your browser to: http://janus.state.me.us/legis/audio/slg_cmte.html

Stay tuned!