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Ink by the barrel

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Illinois

This editorial is causing a stir in “Afternoon Shorts,” so I thought it might deserve its own post.

…Illinois law requires government financial statements - from virtually all schools, townships, cities and counties - to be printed in local newspapers.

An attempt to change that law with Bill 4614 in the Illinois House may be well intentioned because of our changing technology and the ease of getting information via the Internet, but it is wrong.

The bill would permit schools to post their annual financial statements on the State Board of Education Web site instead of requiring them to be printed in a newspaper published within the district. […]

But putting important taxpayer information, such as school financials, onto a Web site instead of providing it in a black and white, permanent record in a local newspaper sets a bad precedent. Both types of publications are ideal in lieu of throwing another obstacle in the path of the peoples’ right to know.

School districts have to have these statements available for public inspection now, but they are rarely inspected because taxpayers who are really interested depend on their being published in their local newspapers, whether those newspapers are daily or weekly publications.

The newspaper versions are portable, and free from hackers.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who seems to be getting quite a kick out of all the attention he’s receiving from irate newspaper publishers.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 1:24 pm

Comments

Attention members of the press who are angry about this one: Tell your local newspaper to not exorbitantly overcharge local school districts for the space used to print these types of informational articles and legislation like this will not need to be proposed.

Comment by heet101 Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 1:43 pm
The notice is a convenient way to get financial information out to the public. It’s a service to constituents. Newspapers provide plenty of FREE services to districts, as well.

Comment by pcn Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 2:32 pm
If the Tribune wrote a similar editorial about an issue that threatened the economic viability of the Chicago Cubs or WGN-TV, they would have gone out of their way to remind people of the Tribune Co’s economic interest in this. It strikes me as a bit disingenuous that the Pantagraph wouldn’t disclose how much money it gets in Government-purchased ad revenue. If an elected official made a similar oversight by failing to explicitly disclose his or her economic interest in an issue, you can be sure the Pantagraph would have excoriated them. So here’s the question — how much would state and local taxpayers save if they could forego print advertising? Aren’t taxpayers in a better position to spend that money than newspapers?

Comment by Skeptic Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 2:34 pm
Printing in the newspaper keeps it public and accessible. Anyone who has tried to get information from a state website, or school, knows that it is nearly impossible to find. And who wants the fox watching the henhouse? I’d rather have it printed somewhere public where it can not be altered and I can find it.

Comment by Lin Lou Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 2:44 pm
Oh right, it’s so much easier to go out and find information on area schools by visiting every local gas station to get the local shopper. Newspapers are up in arms because this will affect their bottom line. People who can’t go out and pick up a local paper will have to suffer. And if there’s a major research project on district schools, or county schools, it actually might be easier to get the information through a central location instead of having to find all of the local papers.

Citizens are savvy enough to know how to use the internet. The craven print media types shouldn’t discount citizens’ intelligence at every turn.

The internet is by far a better, and more widely disseminated, media source. It also happens to be FREE.

Save the sanctimonious crap. The editors want fuller disclosure only to the extent it won’t cut into their bottom line.

Comment by Editors Are Whores Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 3:28 pm
How many good bills does Rep. McCarthy sponsor? Its funny, hes been my Rep for a number or years now, and never seems to do anything.

Comment by Anonymous Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 3:33 pm
So at the same time newspapers are racing to put more of their content online, they want to prevent others from doing the same because it will hurt the bottomline?

There’s no public interest here. Pure economic interst. Last I checked, newspapers were still a for-profit enterprise, with the possible exception of the Tribune (see latest stock reports)

Comment by anon Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 3:35 pm
Oh, I just loved the part about the legal publications in newspapers being so portable and free from hackers.

They forgot to mention: “Easy to use”, because they are not.

I’ve had to deal with township and tax district annual financial publications, and all of the real estate tax related publications. And those are REAL MONEY.

In spite of all their crying and whining, the newspapers are right to take the Internet as a serious threat, because of the following:

1. The newspaper publications are basically a “print image” operation. There’s no intelligence (read: search capabilities) added to what they print. It’s just spewed out there onto the newspaper page. With postings out on the Internet, you can not only have search capabilities within the publication link, but you can also store ‘history’ information (try doing that with a newspaper).

2. The newspapers are “portable” only if you can get a copy of the printed information. Just as a small “tweak” of the Daily Pantagraph, I remember a number of years ago (mid 1990’s I think) where the Pantagraph published the assessment changes for both the City of Bloomington and the City of Normal (both McLean County) on December 25th - and realize, it’s the date of publication that controls your filing of real estate tax complaints (you have 30? calendar days after legal publication). Wonder how many people saw that particular legal publication for that year?

3. Currently, the real estate publication costs per tax record are set in statute, and most places are being forced to use the $1.20 per record (see Sec. 12-15(b) of the Property Tax Code of 1993, as Amended), because when Counties were using the $.80 a tax record, the State newspaper association went all psycho on them and I believe went to the IL AG office and got a legal opinion which they then used to beat all the different IL Counties into submission (and just happen to be forced to spend even more money).

4. Also, the “portable” is just a slight misstatement. First off, the assessors have to send out a legal notice to property owners also, and on the notice they have to tell the property owner what newspaper is being used for the publication and what the cost of the specific newspaper issue is if obtained by mail. Only problem is that most newspapers won’t provide a copy by mail, but they will sell you a copy over their Internet website. Ironic, isn’t it? Apparently, it’s “Internet - BAD!” for all the rest of us, but it’s “Internet - GOOD!” for the newspapers.

5. And don’t even get me started on coverage provided by the newspapers. I know of places where governmental bodies have to publish in newspapers, and the newspapers don’t even cover half the area the governmental body has to provide service to. But the governmental body is forced by the way the laws are written to use this specific newspaper, regardless of how poor their coverage is. In some parts of the state one would be better off using the local Home Shopper, because it’s far more available than the local newspaper, and has far superior coverage. Btw, that’s generally not allowed under the different legal provisions.

Comment by Making The Wheels Turn Friday, Feb 3, 06 @ 5:30 pm
This is a topic where both sides are wrong. Newspapers use there reports as a cash cow, plain and simple - and there is no search capacity. However, it is very easy to hide things on websites, postings can be altered (don’t think Google is going to cache the report of the Chandlerville High School District, which does not exist but is used for purpose of this example), and who is going to ensure the posting and website will be permanent?

Comment by Smitty Irving Saturday, Feb 4, 06 @ 9:27 am
Isn’t the answer to Smitty’s concern obvious - require that the reports be posted on the State Board of Education’s website?

Comment by Anonymous Saturday, Feb 4, 06 @ 10:00 am
It’s hard to believe that so many education administrators are concerned about this issue. In recent years school district budgets have sky rocketed as the General Assembly seeks to provide more education funding. The cost of publishing these notices, ONCE a year is a drop in the bucket when you are dealing multi-million education budget, and frankly who cares if they have to pay the newspapers to publish the information.

Do taxpayers in Illinois really believe that HB 4614 is going to save them money? This bill requires that EVERY school district submit their annual financial statement to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) so that they can post the information on their website. This is the same ISBE that Gov. Blagojevich likened to a Soviet style bureaucracy. I am totally sure that ISBE would instantly develop a quick, cheap and cost effective way for school districts to submit their annual financial statements electronically, without additional cost to taxpayers. Right…

The bottom line is that space in the newspaper is not free, and many newspapers already publish relevant school related information for free, including things like lunch menus and honor rolls. I opened my local paper last week to find the entire back page covered with the names of local students who had recently won academic awards. This is space that could have easily been sold to advertisers, but the newspaper decided to publish news that was in the public interest instead. Newspapers and their publishers care dearly about the communities that they serve, and taking these notices out of newspapers will neither increase the amount of people who read them nor save taxpayer dollars.

Comment by Insider Saturday, Feb 4, 06 @ 10:42 am
Newspapers howl about wasteful spending every chance they get, but it’s the same old story: accountability that protects their bottom line. These financial statements are huge and far be it from the newspapers to cut local governments a break on the publishing costs. Web sites are more accessible than any single newspaper. Simply put a clause in the bill that states the info must be easily accesible from the unit of government’s main page, and also that the unit of government must publish a small notice in the newspaper that this info is now available with the web address. It should be same thing with assessment changes, sample ballots and all the other crap that newspapers make a killing on. Put it all on the net and start saving taxpayers some money.

Comment by Anon Saturday, Feb 4, 06 @ 10:50 am
The Pantagraph feeding at the public trough? Shocked, just shocked, we all are at this obvious hypocrisy from the editorial mouthpiece of religious and political reaction/intolerance (the news pages are fine, though).

Itâ€™s an anachronistic practice (printing school board financial information â€” and other units of government â€” in the newspaper) just like hard-copy newspapers will be in 10 years, a wasteful, resource-intensive, low-tech and inflexible solution to an important public policy problem: public access to government information.

Shame on you, Bill Wills (remember the car repair fraud story you spiked?), although we all knew it already: The Pantagraph is for welfare for newspaper publishers.

Comment by ink by the barrel... Saturday, Feb 4, 06 @ 1:10 pm
Anything that makes the overpaid lobbyists at the Illinois Press Association howl like stuck pigs has to be a good thing.

Let the newspapers howl and pass the legislation. The newspaper publication requirements are nothing more than vestiges of a pre-Internet world in which they were a useful medium for dissemination of this type of information. Well they aren’t so necessary any more.

In prior years, I subscribed to 3 or 4 newspapers to get the same information I need receive for free from their web sites.

Comment by Anon Saturday, Feb 4, 06 @ 3:29 pm
It’s called progress. Newspapers are headed the way of the town crier and broad sheets nailed to a tree. The old way is a bad idea that allow papers to have a guranteed profit. Make way for the electron and the information they carry.

Comment by Eagle I Saturday, Feb 4, 06 @ 9:59 pm
The News-Gazette is starting to get the internet…see their reformated internet website (www.news-gazette.com) that should attract many more users, especially the young and poor, who can’t afford an inefficient paper copy.

The challenge is figuring out how to make a profit, which involves translating an increased number of website hits into advertising dollars.

Meanwhile, in addition to the ISBE website, schools should be required to post financials on their own webpage (get students to make one) and on a school public notice bulletin board next to wherever the school board meets, but stop wasting our tax dollars to support killing more trees and burning more imported oil.

Comment by Anonymous Sunday, Feb 5, 06 @ 6:19 am
I missed the editorials on the school report cards and the value they added, or the editorials on whether schools and other units of government should embrace GASB 34 standards. I missed on some other issues. The format of the current report as published in most papers is useless. The bill address that issue. The newspapers are worried about their $6-15K they get from each district each year. At over 800+ districts that’s a lot of money. I think they also missed where the bill requires certifed notice to the paper. In otherwords it’s worth the dist. paying for the space but not worth the newspaper doing a story on the topic. Sounds like a pure economic issue to me.

Comment by anon Sunday, Feb 5, 06 @ 1:34 pm
I guess, File => Print on the web browser doesn’t work? The cost of the “newsprint” is left up to the person who wants its portability.

Comment by Dauthus Monday, Feb 6, 06 @ 12:50 pm