Taking local and state government public notices of meetings, tax hikes, school closings, gas drilling activity and more off newspaper pages and websites and putting them only on government websites would not better inform taxpayers or save them money.
Quite the contrary.
Some school districts and local governments claim they'd spend less and reach more people with online-only notices. The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) offers many reasons why they're dead wrong. And we heartily concur -- based on the facts .
Already cutting back on existing websites amid tight budgets, they'd spend millions of additional dollars for technology and personnel. And online-only notices wouldn't reach too many Pennsylvanians who -- like 60 percent of seniors -- lack Internet access.
Each of Pennsylvania's 4,000-plus local and state agencies would require its own secure site for archiving and searching its notices.
And -- and this is critical -- with government officials in control, all those sites would be one humongous haystack in which to hide public-notice needles they'd rather not be pricked with.
Pennsylvanians are better off with newspapers statewide -- and usually at a discount -- printing public notices and posting them not only on their own sites but on mypublicnotices.com .
As the PNA says, public notices still belong in newspapers.
