"Newspaper legal ad measure hidden in House revenue bill, prompting outcry."
This says it all.
On March 6, the Courier Journal reported that House lawmakers surreptitiously reneged on a compromise measure, relating to newspaper publications of legal advertisements, reached earlier in the 2020 legislative session.
HB 195, the Courier reported, "originally would have permitted all agencies to switch to publishing notices online as long as they published a small newspaper notice advising people of how to find the information."
But an amendment to that bill was brokered — "requir[ing] public agencies in smaller communities to publish legal ads in the local newspaper rather than online" — before it passed out of the House on a vote of 51-40 and moved to the Senate.
There it remains.
HB 351, "a revenue bill and a companion to the state budget bill," reinserted the offending legal advertisement language. It was quietly added to HB 351, "which was released Thursday night, presented to House members for a vote Friday," and passed 57-34.
Is it any wonder that opponents of the bill — which seems to be predicated on the notion that government can be trusted to be fully transparent — are crying "foul?"
In late January, the Coalition shared an editorial about this legislative threat to the public's right to know written by Kentucky New Era publisher Brandon Cox.
https://www.facebook.com/419650175248377/posts/614688239077902/?d=n
In it, Cox persuasively refuted every argument advanced by the proponents of the original bill, including the arguments based on purported fiscal savings to local governments.
Most persuasively, Cox asserted:
"A free press exists to hold power to account. The public should believe strongly that those who govern be accountable by way of an independent third party. The public should not rely on any local government to have control over what is placed on a website, how it is placed or where it is placed."
Make no mistake: this *is* clearly an open government issue.
If lawmakers cannot be trusted to introduce new laws in an open and aboveboard manner, with adequate notice to other lawmakers and the public, how can we trust public officials governed by those laws to fully and consistently discharge their duties relative to legal advertisements under HB 351.
As opponents noted after the vote on HB 351, legal advertisements, "could well be tucked away on a government website" just as yesterday's dealbreaker was "quietly tucked into the package of Republican-backed House budget bills approved Friday."
