Polk commissioners again consider ordinance eliminating public notices in newspapers
Another hearing has been set in Bartow by the County Commission for an ordinance to eliminate a longstanding requirement that public notices and legal ads concerning county decision-making appear in newspapers.
An ordinance under consideration by the commissioners on Tuesday would change the requirement and require the notices to be published on a publicly accessible website run by the county.
Online publication would be in lieu of newspaper publication as it is now required by Polk County ordinances and other policies, the agenda items says.
In September, a majority of the commission voted against the ordinance after members of the public and newspaper publishers opposed the change.
Historically, governmental boards have been required to purchase notices in local newspapers to announce upcoming meetings that involve things such as budgets, taxes and land-use changes, among others.
In 2022, legislation (HB 7049) signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis loosened that requirement, allowing governmental bodies the option of publishing notices on website.
“Proponents have made repeated attempts over the years to repeal the newspaper requirement for legal notices, arguing that local governments shouldn’t be forced to subsidize the papers,” the Florida Bar Association said. It added, “Newspaper publishers have warned that the loss of advertising revenue associated with the notices will further hurt the struggling industry.”
September's vote
Often published on the inside pages of the newspaper, legal notices announce upcoming agenda items at public meetings, tax increases, sheriff’s auctions and many other notifications of pending actions by government agencies.
The change in Polk County met with stiff resistance at the Sept. 10 meeting of the commissioners.
After impassioned pleas from some community members and local media outlets, the Polk County Commission voted 3-2 to continue to advertise important public business in newspapers.
Commissioners George Lindsey, Martha Santiago and Neil Combee voted against circumventing newspapers by creating the county website for public notices. But after the vote, Combee, seemed confused. During an exchange between Combee and Lindsey — the chair at the time — Lindsey explained, “The decision today was to stay the course as we are today.” Combee responded: “I believe you, but that is not what I wanted.”
Combee's comments, both before that original vote and during a recent agenda review, appeared to lean toward posting notices on a county-run web portal. But there was also talk of a possible "hybrid" solution – still advertising in the newspaper, with the additional step of posting information to a county website.
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Reached by text on Friday, Commission Chair Bill Braswell said he liked "the web based solution."
"There is not an adult in the country that doesn't have a phone in their pocket and therefore access to the Internet and every public notice required by the county.
He also liked the reduced cost of an online portal. "The county has also been able to dramatically reduce their costs, and simplify the process."
Reached by email on Friday, former Planning Commission member Sue Nelson said, “While I think this is a sincere approach by the county to save money, I think it’s a huge mistake.”
“When I was on the Planning Commission, we would constantly hear complaints that the surrounding residents weren’t properly notified of proposed land use changes,” she said.
“Public notices published by a third party like The Ledger negate the conspiracy theory effect and provide for the sanitizing effect of sunshine that our Governor is always emphasizing,” Nelson said.
'Newspaper websites are usually the highest-traffic sites'
At the September meeting, several people spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting, from citizens to representatives of local newspapers.
Valla Dana Treuman, a retired teacher from Winter Haven, said as elected officials, the County Commission needed to embrace opportunities to be transparent with public information.
“When I heard that we as citizens have to fight for our right to know what the public notices are, I was rather amazed and shocked that our county commissioners would actually consider removing public notices from the public eye in our newspapers where they have been for over 250 years,” Treuman said.
Jim Fogler, president of the Florida Press Association and a regional advertising president for Gannett, the parent company of The Ledger, said the Polk County measure would result in less transparency about public information.
"While the new state law allows the county to publish legal ads solely on their own publicly accessible website without newspaper notice, I feel this is a bad result for the public," Fogler said. "Newspaper websites possess a larger audience due to a wealth of information across a breadth of issues. A newspaper’s web audience is typically many times larger than most city or county websites. Without newspaper media outlets housing public notices, there will be less written information provided to the people — whether it be an environmentally sensitive project, a school board decision, or the zoning of a housing development."
He also noted that the FPA had partnered with tech partner Column to help newspapers implement the new state law and place all government notices on one website, floridapublicnotices.com, which is free for public use.
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David Dunn-Rankin of D-R Media and Investments LLC, which publishes seven Sun Newspapers around Florida, including editions in the Four Corners, Winter Haven and a Polk County edition, has offered to save the county money by offering most legal notices free of charge, both in print and online.
He also has offered to build the county a website for public notices for free.
About saving money?
The proposed government website is expected to cost $30,000 a year, a county spokeswoman said. As of September, the county has spent $10,000 on a new website. The county pays about $100,000 for all public notices it places in local newspapers.
Retired Ledger reporter Tom Palmer, who writes for the Ancient Islands Group of the Sierra Club and sometimes speaks on environmental issues at county meetings, said during public comments that the move was all about hurting local community newspapers because of politics in Tallahassee.
“Let’s cut to the chase, this isn’t about how much it costs,” Palmer said. “This is about stickin’ it to the hometown newspaper and cutting their bottom line. That’s the net effect of this change.”
The legislation allowing local governments to change how it notified the public in writing became law on Jan. 1, 2023. Opponents considered it another step toward rolling back Florida’s laws on access to public information and even an attempt to hide public decision making or actions likely to impact their constituents.
State lawmakers from Polk County who voted for the bill in March 2022 included now-state Senator and former Rep. Colleen Burton (R-Lakeland), state Rep. Sam Killebrew (R-Winter Haven), state Rep. Melony Bell (R-Fort Meade), and Rep. Josie Tomkow (R-Polk City).
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Polk commissioners set hearing to end public notices in newspapers