Don’t let the government hide this information from you

What is your government trying to hide from you?

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Your government – people you know and have elected to office – want to hide things from you. Every biennium the Texas Legislature considers bills to take away the requirements of publishing public notices in local newspapers. This session is no different, but lawmakers have taken a different tack. Rather than try to eliminate the requirement completely and move everything online to some obscure government-run website, they are chipping away at the law. What is most alarming is they are doing it in a way that will help protect scofflaws and deadbeats.

This session the charge is being led by Sen. Joan Huffman, a Republican from the southwest side of Houston. Huffman is someone I used to cover when I was at the Fort Bend Star. Actually, I only met her a couple times as she keeps a very low profile for an elected official. (By contrast, I saw Sen. Lois Kolkhorst several times and only half of Fort Bend County is on the outer edge of her district.)

Huffman introduced Senate Bill 891, which would create the website where public notices would go and also move what is commonly known as legal notices to that website and take them away from newspapers. These legal notices are not the ones that local governments are required to publish, but the last-resort notices when authorities are trying to serve legal papers for things like tax lien foreclosures, child custody lawsuits, and other civil matters.

The whole purpose of publishing these notices is to bring attention to them. The idea is to enlist the public’s help in finding these people, many of whom don’t want to be found. By hiding these notices on a website and taking them out of public view defeats the purpose of having them in the first place. This only helps those trying to shirk their responsibilities evade detection.

In a recent committee hearing on the bill, Huffman proposed creating a hybrid system of publication using the website and newspapers but capping the cost of publication at $200 for larger notices. This is also a bad idea because in some cases $200 doesn’t cover the cost of publication. It also ads a level of government control over the free press by dictating newspaper advertising rates.

Although Huffman’s bill is bad enough, it also opens the door for the Legislature to swoop in two years from now and take away public notices altogether. They’ll argue that they already have a website up and running and use that to justify the removal of published public notices. This is a bad thing on many levels.

First of all, this puts government in charge of public notices. It takes away public scrutiny. It is a slippery slope that leans away from the state’s sunshine laws. Do you really want the fox in charge of the henhouse? Neither do we.

Secondly, it removes these government actions from open public inspection. It takes them away from the eyes of the watchdogs (the press) as well as you, the public. Instead of having public information delivered to you, they want to make you go and find it. This ultimately leads to more secrecy in government and reduced accountability of elected public officials.

I know that there are some of you who are thinking that the only reason newspapers are fighting for public notices is for financial reasons. There is some truth to that, but just a little. It’s no secret that the newspaper industry is undergoing rapid change in the digital world. We do depend on revenues from public notices. If that revenue stream dries up, so does our ability to keep eyes on government, which we suspect is what some elected officials want. Anything they can do to weaken the power of the press gives them a freer rein with your tax dollars and your rights.

This bill by Huffman only serves to hide and protect those who are trying to do wrong. It’s a stepping stone to limiting the freedom of the press. It may be good for government but it’s bad for the governed. We urge you to contact Huffman and the other legislators and let them know you’re against HB 891 and any other attempt to take away public scrutiny of government actions.

Huffman can be reached at 512-463-0117 or Joan.Huffman@senate.texas.gov. Lois Kolkhorst, our senator, can be reached at 512-463-0118 or lois.kolkhorst@senate.texas.gov.