In a victory for newspapers, a bill to allow municipalities to put all public notices on the Internet was killed Wednesday by a key legislative committee.
The rejection was the third straight year for a bill that is highly important for newspapers. Collectively, the state's newspapers receive millions of dollars annually from public notices that are required to be published in a local newspaper. The money has become even more important as other types of advertising, such as classified, have been dropping in recent years.
The legal notices cover a wide variety of governmental information, including details of the annual town budget and notification of town meetings and zoning applications.
The dismissal by the Democratic-controlled Government Administration and Elections committee was done Wednesday without a formal vote, which is a common practice by committees under the legislative rules. The low-key dismissal was sharply different from a high profile, all-out campaign last year that featured full-page advertisements in newspapers around the state.
"Don't Close The Door On The Public's Right To Know'' blared one of the advertisements that was placed in the Waterbury Republican-American.
Another ad in The Hartford Courant stated, "The Government Can't Police Itself.''
The low-key strategy was developed this year, insiders said, because Gov. Dannel P. Malloy had told newspaper publishers that he was against the bill. That statement came from Malloy in February when he gathered top editors and publishers at the governor's mansion in Hartford's West End for a meeting about his proposed state budget. As such, the newspapers avoided the full-blown advertising campaign this year and instead worked behind the scenes to kill the bill.
The difference is that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell had not only favored the idea in 2010 but inserted the idea into a budget bill. But the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association argued then - and now - that fewer people would have the chance to read the public notices because they would be buried on government web sites. Citing U.S. Census Bureau figures, the newspapers argued that less than 10 percent of citizens actually read government web sites.
The measure this year had been initially approved by the legislature's planning and development committee by a vote of 19 to 1. The committee's co-chairman is Sen. Steve Cassano, the former mayor of Manchester and a longtime supporter of municipalities.
The bill has been pushed through the years by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities as a way to save money for cities and towns and as a way to avoid the cost of an unfunded mandate. New Britain, for example, would have saved thousands of dollars a year.
All 169 cities and towns in Connecticut would have saved money if they were allowed to publish the legal notices exclusively on municipal web sites.