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Thursday, February 03, 2011
"Keeping The Public In The Dark" Bill To Be Heard In NM Senate Corporations Committee Friday
Talk about a bad idea, especially in a state where internet connections are slow or nonexistent, and many ordinary people can't afford it anyway. Conservation Voters New Mexico (CVNM) warns that on Friday, February 4th, the NM State Senate Corporations Committee (SCORC) will hear Senate Bill 147, which would terminate government’s obligation to publish legal notices in local newspapers. The legislation, which is sponsored by Senator David Ulibarri (D-Grants), would alter public notice requirements to allow public notices to be published on a designated website rather than in local newspapers. Currently legal notices are required to be published in the appropriate community newspapers.
This change would mean that New Mexicans would no longer be able to learn about government notices or issues that may affect their community by reading the local paper. Any notice of hearings for permitting dairy farms, power plants, regulatory hearings or many other issues would no longer be published in the affected communities. Residents would need to seek out this information on the internet.
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WHAT: Senate Corporations Committee to vote on SB 147, which would allow Government to avoid publishing public notices in local newspapers.
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WHERE: Room 311 of the State Capitol in Santa Fe
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WHEN: The committee is scheduled to begin hearings at 2:00 PM on Friday, February 4th.
Interested parties are encouraged to attend Friday’s hearing.
February 3, 2011 at 09:38 PM in NM Legislature 2011, Regulation | Permalink
Comments
This is an interesting proposition. I am all for anything that flattens communication and opens it up to instant access. I am also for anything that takes away revenue from the ABQ Journal.
If you go to the ABQ library, you see the myriad of people using the internet who do not have personal access. But you are right, there are still many people without easy internet access. These same folks, however, may not read the legals in the ABQ paper either.
In small towns across NM, however, people still rely on their local weekly to provide valuable information. So, what to do? What about doing both? Continue to publish in papers and an electronic migration.
Studies show that more and more people are getting their news not from papers, not even from TV, but from the internet. We have seen what happens world-wide with phones and internet, and how hard it is to stop the dissemination of real news. Yea!
But this also puts more pressure on people to be discerning and separate fact from fiction in reading blogs, etc.
Posted by: cheryl | Feb 4, 2011 11:16:23 AM
If the goal was to get info out to more people, Ulibarri would be proposing adding info to a website and keeping the other notices going at newspapers. That is not his goal. He is owned by special interests, especially mining and uranium interests, and his goal is to help them sneak through changes they want without much or any input from the public.
Posted by: I Live In Grants | Feb 4, 2011 11:22:13 AM
Luckily there is a solution that would preserve independence and save the taxpayer money:
Look at this site https:// free-public-notice.com . It is FREE-You don’t have to subscribe to a newspaper to receive the notices THE NOTICES COME TO YOU-. No more hunting for notices in the back of the newspaper. They e-mail alerts based on preference of both type of notice and locality. (“Please e-mail me whenever there is a zoning hearing in Camden". Set it up once and forget it. -IMMEDIATE-The local government doesn’t have to wait for the notice to be published in the newspaper for it to be published on line. The government employees can upload it straight to the site. -BETTER DISCLOSURE-They link to the original documents (zoning maps, bid specifications, providing way more information than a notice in print. In addition, they map to the localities-DOCUMENTATION- they provide affidavits of publishing. -GREEN- No cutting down trees to publish these notices. -PERMANENCE- The notices stay on line forever. In newspapers they are published in a few editions and then are gone. COST SAVINGS- The local governments will save 90% of what they spend in notices. The newspaper’s publish the notices for only a few weeks.This issue is playing out all over the country. Read https://legal-notice.org. Newspapers do a lot of things really well. But so do a lot of businesses. It doesn’t mean as taxpayers we should overspend for a service that is now inferior.
Posted by: MarkJacob | Feb 4, 2011 12:04:04 PM
@Mark Jacobs: You've missed the point. The issue is limiting transparency and access to information. Some people aren't online, you know, especially in rural communities, where local papers are still common.
The dead tree edition is not dead yet. Until internet access and usage is truly universal, I think Cheryl's solution is best. "Continue to publish in papers and start publishing legal notices online as well.
If you want to save taxpayers money, how about making special elections and school elections mail-in? The APS election was a farce.
Posted by: Proud Democrat | Feb 4, 2011 5:01:11 PM
