A bill to remove public notices from newspapers in favor of a new, online system has been wisely slowed in the Legislature. LD 1878, sponsored by Rep. Terry Hayes, D-Buckfield, was estimated to save $1.5 million annually by scrapping traditional methods of publishing upcoming government actions.

(Note: Yes, newspapers receive revenue for publishing notices. Ceasing them would affect that revenue stream.)

The bill would have failed in the House, proponents said, despite commonplace sentiment that public notices is an area ripe for cost savings. In essence, they are right: notice publishing costs have increased about $30,000 annually for the past few years (except for 2001-02, when it declined by $17,700).

In 2006, the Secretary of State’s Office spent $451,256.15 on notices, an increase of $37,820 from 2005, according to spokesman Don Cookson, while the number of actual rule-making notices published by the agency has remained steady for a decade, between 744 and 947 annually.

Why?

Cookson noted two reasons: rising publication rates, and heightened sensitivity on the part of notifying agencies to be as “explicit as possible” with information, which increased the size of notices, and raised costs because the state was simply purchasing more newspaper acreage than before.

These are important points, as it was publication costs that inspired LD 1878. The reasons for the increase within the existing notices system weren’t fully explored, or debated, while lawmakers hurtled ahead on ambitious predictions of cost savings by switching to a high-tech, yet unproven, system.

Sending LD 1878 back to committee means the homework on the bill can now occur. After all, an effective, efficient online system of circulating public notices is a marvelous concept.

But not as the lone method of delivering critical government information to the public it serves.