Hoodwinked, Kentucky

Some members of the General Assembly continue trying to pull a fast one on ya, Kentucky!

For months I've railed about how bad of an idea it is to allow government agencies to post their public notices on their own websites instead of publishing them in the local newspaper of record.

Read my January column here. And here's one from March. We ran a few ads, too.

The proposed policy hurts transparency by forcing engaged citizens and interested parties to scour hundreds of websites with different navigation tools to find what they're looking for buried 100 pages in. Not to mention so much of rural Kentucky still lacks broadband access.

The policy allows government corruption more space to run and hide. And, it will cost cities and counties as much or more to maintain than if they just continued what they've been doing for more than 100 years.

Plus, Kentucky newspapers are already doing what the legislature proposed to do. Every notice we collectively publish is posted online at kypublicnotice.com, and we pay for and maintain that infrastructure.

Not to mention, our owned and operated websites are the highest traffic websites in our respective regions, not the local government one-pager with a photo of the mayor three mayors ago.

"The world has changed, everyone is digital now," one of my own representatives told me to my face.

"It will save cities and counties hundreds of thousands of dollars," the bill's sponsor tried to convince people.

He wasn't even sure about his numbers. In three tweets about savings for his home county, the bill's sponsor ranged from $600,000 to $500,000 to $700,000 in the course of 45 days.

That, in and of itself, is disingenuous anyway. Language in the 2018 budget already allowed for the publication of notices online for certain agencies in cities and counties with a population threshold of more than 90,000. The bill's sponsor hails from Jefferson County, which the 2010 Census says has a population of 741,096. So, this $600,000 - $500,000 - $700,000 - whatever it may be - figure isn't new savings anyway.

The proposed policy passed and was eventually vetoed, and then snuck back into the budget in a scaled-back version, line-item vetoed again and then overridden. What becomes law now is not much different from existing law, but includes new language designed to embarrass newspapers.

In each legal notice now, certain newspapers are supposed to print how much they charged to publish it. What you won't see is that for nearly every agency in Kentucky the cost of publication is less than one percent of the agency's total operating budget -- this from a study done by the General Assembly's own Legislative Research Commission. Read Research Report 431 here.

Anyway, let's see how easy it is to keep up to date and just how digital everyone is nowadays.

Here's a screenshot from Hancock County, Kentucky's website taken yesterday. Most small counties and municipalities don't have websites, but this one does. Great! Let's check it out at https://www.hancockky.us.

Let's click on "Government" and "New Ordinances" and see what's up.

Awesome, they haven't passed an ordinance since September 22, 2008! Wait, no. That can't be right.

Congratulations, Kentucky. You can expect more of this in years to come as your elected representatives focus on the real issues like harming local newspapers and circumventing transparency.

Brandon Cox is the publisher of the Kentucky New Era, Oak Grove Eagle Post and Cadiz Record in Christian and Trigg Counties. He also manages the newspapers in Madisonville, Dawson Springs, Providence, Russellville and Franklin. He can be reached by email to [email protected]. Follow Brandon on Twitter at @BrandonJCox.