Cities attempt to eliminate accountability notices

Little things can make a big differ­ence. Printed pub­lic notices in newspapers are little things, but they make a big difference when keeping govern­ment accountable to citi­zens and taxpayers.

It is no surprise the Oklahoma Municipal League has in­troduced legislative pro­posals to elimi­nate printed notices in news­papers. The OML wants you to swallow their concept that a notice on a city website is sufficient when they want to annex your property, build a dump next to your home­stead or have an elec­tion.

But Oklahoma legisla­tors understand the val­ue of local newspapers and the printed public notices that are required to be in the paper. Okla­homans also value print­ed notices in local news­papers.

In a recent statewide survey Oklahomans were asked if notices should appear only on a government website. 70 percent said no; 12 percent said yes. Those are percent­ages everybody can un­derstand.

Oklahomans were also asked if local govern­ments should be required to print notices in local newspapers. 68 percent said yes and 16 percent said no.

Some people want you to believe newspapers and their readers are nearly dead. This is not the case. In fact, news­paper readership is high — especially in local ar­eas — and newspaper readers are the most in­formed active citizens in town. You’re proving that point right now!

Here are a few nasty truths about city-oper­ated websites and cable channels. They don’t carry any bad news about the city. It’s all fluffy stuff about how wonder­ful things are in the city.

Go visit your city web­site. Search for stories about the embezzling employee, police brutali­ty cases, questionable ex­penditures by city man­agement or legal actions against the city. Let me know if it is on the home page. You may have wit­nessed a local miracle.

Here’s another prob­lem. City-operated web­sites don’t push notices out to anyone. While accessible to everyone with a computer, they notify no one.

The annexation or eminent domain notice intended to warn citi­zens the city is about to take their property just sits on a computer server until you get the urge to cruise their website. But local newspapers print and push out these notic­es, making them widely available to everyone in the area.

Another fundamen­tal flaw of digital public notice is that they can be altered or deleted. If there is an error, the city can simply fix the notice to their liking. Then the city can swear on its own authority that the notice was always correct and ran for the right amount of time. How convenient. I wonder if they will pin­ky swear or use the more legally binding cross- my­heart- and- hope- to- die swear.

That is not so with ink­on- paper notices in the local newspaper. Ink­on-paper notices cannot be hacked or altered. Newspapers are an inde­pendent third party and provide a notarized af­fidavit the notice ran as required by law.

You can also find pub­lic notices in newspapers as far back as you need to look. I can’t find a website I looked at last week, and when I do the infor­mation has changed or been deleted.

These legislative pro­posals for online- only public notices — in a medium controlled by the cities — are not in line with the thinking of Oklahomans, and cer­tainly not in line with the founding principles of this country. Govern­ment should be account­able to the people, and lo­cal newspapers are one of the few defenses citizens have to make sure that happens.

Cities should be re­quired to warn you of their actions in the very medium they sometimes despise — the local news­paper that monitors and reports on their actions — both good and bad.

Public notices in lo­cal newspapers make a big difference in keeping your city government accountable. That must be why cities want them eliminated from your lo­cal newspaper.

If they say it is the cost, then I urge citizens to ask for the city check­book and review how they spent every penny of your tax money. My guess is citizens would find other expenses that could be cut before accountability notices are eliminated.

Mark Thomas is execu­tive director of the Okla­homa Press Association.