Whatchamacolumn: Yet another raid on legal notices in newspapers

It’s time for the annual raid on legal notices that have been published in Oregon newspapers for more than 150 years — the subject of a full-page display in today’s News-Register.

In the guise of saving money, the latest proposal to the Oregon Legislature would allow publication of legal notices on any website carrying some kind of local news, so long as 25 percent is locally composed. In other words, anyone with a computer could become sole publisher of public messages deemed so important that laws require their publication and archiving in newspapers.

In 1874, Oregon law first required legal notices to be published in newspapers. Early publication laws were compiled into Lord’s Oregon Laws in 1909, and more than 100 years later, newspapers still are the place where legal notices should be published.

People often confuse these phrases: “Public notices” are messages that governments deliver to citizens in various ways, sometimes mandated to reach individuals who request them; “legal notices” are required by local ordinances and state laws to be published in newspapers, where citizens know to look. Those newspapers understand and safeguard the legal mandates that protect timely and archived public access to the notices.

Passage of a proposal gathering steam in Salem this year would eliminate that consistency. It also would eliminate the Oregon newspaper industry’s statewide compilation of all published legal notices into a searchable online database — a system created and maintained at high expense by the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association.

Long ago, Oregon’s county governments successfully eliminated perhaps the most impactful legal notices ever – the “county proceedings.” Every month for many decades, county governments were required to publish a list of all expenditures, identifying the item or service, its cost and the supplier; every year, county governments had to publish a list of all employees and their salaries.

That law is why counties were the most conservative spenders among Oregon governmental bodies. It was a long, long battle in Salem to kill county proceedings, which instead, should have been extended to cities, school districts and other governmental bodies.

Many years ago, legal notices represented just 1-2 percent of newspaper revenues. Today, with loss of so much newspaper revenue to the digital world, moving legal notices to random websites will eliminate much local news coverage at many newspapers and close the doors for others.

If truth be told, some state legislators would welcome those newspaper closures for reasons that have nothing to do with legal notices.

Two years ago, ONPA worked with the Legislature to craft a new law allowing publication of legal notices in digital-only newspapers bound by various “guardrails,” including paid circulation and e-editions in newspaper format. That law needs time to work, and provides an easy route for digital newspaper publishers to gain eligibility for legal notices.

We can only hope that lawmakers pushing the latest assault on newspaper legal notices will hear and listen to citizens who believe printed and e-edition newspapers still are the best place for publication of important legal notices.

Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.