News

Bills would limit public notice of upcoming legislation

As companion state Senate and Assembly bills modifying public notification requirements are emerging from last Thursday’s committee hearing, legislative supporters are citing their economic advantages while newspapers are pointing to their likely adverse effects upon public awareness.

If passed, AB 257, along with its Senate companion SB 126, would allow local governments to simply publish summaries of legislation passed rather than the ordinances in their entirety. Within the summaries, however, governments would be required to include information notifying citizens of where to attain full copies of laws, presumably the Internet and municipality offices.

Both State Sen. Carol Roessler, R-Oshkosh, and State Rep. Mark Gottlieb, R-Port Washington, authors of SB 126 and AB 257, see the companion bills as an economic measure designed to relieve taxpayers.

“Some ordinances can take up a couple of pages in a newspaper,” Gottlieb said, pointing to the costs imposed by current law requiring full publication of lengthy legislation.

These costs are deferred to property taxpayers but AB 257 would offer “some flexibility to try to save some money,” Gottlieb added.

The bill was met with support when presented to the Republican-led Committee on Veterans, Homeland Security, Military Affairs, Small Business and Government Reform.

Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Brown, R-Eau Claire, defended the Senate’s bill, saying the general public is more likely to read legislative summaries than full-length ordinances filled with indeterminable legal lingo.

While supporters are boasting the bills’ financial savings, newspapers are labeling these savings as pale in comparison to the value of the information that would be excluded.

According to Wisconsin Newspaper Association Executive Director Peter Fox, the Association believes both bills are “poor public policy” limiting the amount of information citizens can readily obtain.

“Yes, I am aware that advocates of the bill[s] say it saves money. But in this case the means don’t justify the ends,” Fox said. “[The bills] puts the burden on citizens to track down the full text of ordinances that are enacted by village, city, town and county governments.”

Additionally, groups such as minorities and the elderly do not have access to the Internet to obtain full-length texts, Fox added.

“[W]hat if people don’t subscribe to the news?” Gottlieb asked. “Arguably more people have the Internet than a newspaper subscription.”

Gottlieb also pointed to the fact that these bills only apply to ordinances that have already been passed by the legislature, not those issues which are facing consideration and public opinion before review.

Meanwhile, the newspaper industry’s motives are being questioned, and many believe the dailies have an interest in protecting the comprehensive nature of information.

“We recognize that newspapers have a financial interest, but this is extremely small and does not come into play at all in our opposition of the bills,” Fox maintained. “We only believe [the bills] put further obstacles between citizens and the government.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of journalism and mass communication Robert Drechsel is wary of the bills’ possible damaging effects on an increasingly apathetic public, unwilling to engage in the extra effort of searching for news that has not been conveniently placed within its reach.

“I would be awfully cautious,” Drechsel said. “The risk is that it might discourage people from looking up information that they would otherwise look at if it was right in front of them. [The bills] save money at the cost of easy accessibility of data.”