Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

It seems apparent that a bill proposal in a legislative conference committee is both a blow to transparency and to open government.  And its a knee-jerk and rushed reaction to a limited situation within our state.

The Senate-passed omnibus education bill (SF3567) would allow every school district in the state to pull the public notices from being widely distributed by newspapers and their websites to instead being posted on lightly trafficked and school-managed websites.

Behind the bill is the Minnesota School Boards Association and its somewhat veiled reasoning that it will save schools a few thousand dollars a year.  But that meager savings isn’t the full picture.  The action would mean millions of state taxpayers would be without information needed for self-governance.  It would mean schools could manage how much and if taxpayers can easily access that information.

The bill came about because of a limited situation a few weeks ago when it was announced by a large newspaper chain that seven newspapers it owns in the southwest metro area would being closed.

We understand that those school districts need legislation to allow alternative publication of public notices when no newspaper is available within their district.  But to use that to introduce a bill that affects every school district and newspaper in the state is simply overreach.

Newspapers support a narrower time-limited bill that would address those school districts in that small area of our state.  A House version of the bill does just that.  We, along with the Minnesota Newspaper Association and all the viable newspapers in the state oppose the Senate version of the bill. It goes too far.

In most cases,across the state and right here in our community, the school district uses the newspaper to let people know about its proceedings, its business, its financial statements, it’s tax implications and other information.  These are important notifications that affect all those within a school district.  Letting all school districts simply shift those notices to a school-based website would not save much money and certainly would not be better at informing the people of the district about the schools’ business decisions.

As stated in an editorial in the Mankato Free Press over the weekend:

“…Reducing access to meeting minutes and financial statements cheats the taxpayers just as the Legislature made historically huge new investments in school funding last year.”

We hope our local school administration and school board rejects the idea of reducing public access to public notices.