PNA, April 27

Calls are needed on public notice advertising legislation

By Deborah Musselman, Director of Government Affairs
Pennsylvania Newspaper Association

Newspaper people are urged to stay in touch with legislators, particularly senators, on a piece of legislation that PNA strongly opposes. House Bill 1906, Printer's No. 3035 passed the state House on Nov. 1, 2005 and is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It would replace newspaper publication of all sorts of corporate formations with ‘posting’ of Pennsylvania Department of State Corporation Bureau records on the World Wide Web.

As of today, the General Assembly is into the final two weeks of the early spring session. Both chambers have voting days scheduled for May 1, 2, and 3 before returning to their districts for the May 16 primary election.

Let’s quickly review the reasons why “putting it on the Internet” is not an adequate substitute for publication in a newspaper. Saving money for small businesses and making information more widely available are the primary excuses that proponents give for this proposal.

Our surveys of newspaper charges for public notice classified advertisements, however, repeatedly show rates of less than $100 for a 1-inch ad, far less than the figures touted by the bill’s sponsors.

The survey that PNA commissioned last year on newspaper advertising from American Opinion Research in Princeton, N.J., found a broad readership for legal advertising -- 75 percent of adult newspaper readers who have seen public notices read them; and 60 percent of respondents report that they would read public notices less often if they were put on a government Web site. Only 7 percent would read them more often. Click here to view those results.

Readership data aside, it’s crucial to understand that searching a database on the Internet does NOT provide actual notice, as documented in your proof of publication, nor does it protect due process. The meat of this issue -- and why no state has yet moved to Internet “advertising” -- is discussed in detail by the Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal. Click here to view that article and the editorial that appeared in December, 2005.

A final warning on this bill -- bar association lobbyists have been seeking amendments to House Bill 1906 to “supplement” Internet posting with publication in county bar-owned legal journals. Lawyers read those publications, and they’ll look out for their clients’ interests!

Such a scheme assumes that citizens ought to pay lawyers just to monitor local business developments, an elitist as well as self-serving approach. Think about the kinds of notices that could follow corporate formation filings down this same road -- town meeting notices when something controversial is brewing, fictitious names, the filing of the will of that distant cousin. The average reader’s ability to stay abreast of the events in his community would have to be mediated by the local lawyers, under that scenario.

PNA supports Senate Bill 392, Printer's No. 678, sponsored by Sen. Stewart Greenleaf. The bill’s requirement that newly formed LLC and LLP business entities advertise formation -- “like all the rest of us,” as one businessman recently put it -- closes a loophole in current law and is only fair, considering that the rest of the bill would put those entities on the same legal footing as other types of businesses that already have advertising requirements.

The House amended House Bill 1906 to get rid of newspaper advertising for all business formations at the height of last fall’s outcry over the infamous pay raise. Just this month, however, both chambers acknowledged the true value of public notices in newspapers of general distribution by including such publication as an element of “eminent domain” legislation passed in response to last year’s Supreme Court decision. The House accepted the Senate's amendments to House Bill 2054 on Monday afternoon and the bill is now on the Governor’s desk.

Technical and legal challenges to public notice will continue unabated, nonetheless, and it’s important for senators to hear why HB 1906 is such a bad idea. As always, feel free to call me at (717) 703-3077 or e-mail me at deborahm@pa-news.org if you need an update.

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