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SINCE COLONIAL TIMES, state and local governments have been required to publish legal advertisements in newspapers about official proclamations, court citations, vital records, and the like. Also known as public notices, these agate-size ads inform the community of important public business — and provide the press with a crucial revenue stream.

Now, though, that system is under threat in Massachusetts. Two bills would allow legal ads to be published on government websites without any mandate that they be placed with news organizations.

One bill, House 2243, would free state and local governments as well as private entities that are required buy legal ads to circumvent that process by publishing them, at no cost, on “a city or town-wide website that may be maintained as a repository for such notices.”

Publishing those notices in a newspaper “of local or general circulation” would remain an option, as would “a newspaper’s website, including on-line only newspaper publications.” So would “a statewide website that may be maintained as a repository for such notices,” which appears to be a reference to a database maintained by the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association comprising public notices that have already been published in newspapers. But if local officials wished to circumvent the press entirely, they would be free to do so.

The other bill, House 2315, would similarly allow cities and towns to post proposed changes in zoning bylaws on their municipal websites as an alternative to publishing them as legal ads in local newspapers.

The bills were sent last summer to the House Committee on Bills in the Third Reading, a way station for legislation, and it’s unclear whether they might come up for a vote during the current session. Rep. James Arena-Rosa, a Holliston Democrat, the sponsor of H.2243, said by email that his proposal may not be acted on this year. Rep. Michael Moran of Boston, the House majority leader and sponsor of H. 2315, could not be reached by phone or through several email inquiries.

In a phone interview, Arena-Rosa said the language cutting out news organizations was inserted as an amendment, without his knowledge, at some point after he filed his bill. But he added that he’s not opposed to it, pointing out that municipalities are currently operating under budget constraints and that this could save them some money.

Arena-Rosa observed that he represents small towns, and not all of them have viable local news outlets. Under current law, he said, they have to place legal ads in the MetroWest Daily News, a chain-owned paper with virtually no presence in those towns.

Referring to the ad revenue that newspapers receive from public notices, he said, “I think there’s some value to that. And the flip of that is that a lot of local towns are hurting for resources, too.”

Public notices enhance democracy

Yet there is substantial evidence that requiring public notices to be published in independent news outlets is beneficial to democracy. For instance, a recent study showed that a 2022 Florida law allowing public notices to be published only on government websites was correlated with a measurable decline in civic engagement, with the average number of speakers at government meetings falling by about 16 percent. Relatedly, the number of commercial construction permits rose by 35 percent.

“If you don’t have those people coming to the meetings, then it’s much easier for the local government to process this permit, and they keep issuing more,” one of the researchers, Yale scholar Anya Nakhmurina, was quoted as saying.

According to the Public Notice Research Center, legal ads are one leg of a three-legged stool (along with public-records laws and open meetings) ensuring government transparency. Requiring that legal ads be placed in newspapers, the center says, guarantees “accessibility, independence, verifiability, and archivability.”

Robert Ambrogi, a lawyer who is the executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association, which opposes the Arena-Rosa and Moran bills, told me in a phone interview, “It has been the tradition that they are published by independent watchdogs.” To allow municipalities to publish them on their own, he said, is akin to “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” explaining that notices could be changed after initial publication or even removed.

“I certainly don’t want to suggest that all government officials are in some ways corrupt,” Ambrogi said. “But it does enable those who are corrupt. It’s extremely important that a third-party watchdog be in charge of these public notices.”

They are also a significant source of revenue to the embattled newspaper business. Although accurate estimates are hard to come by, David Westphal, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, has noted that New Jersey newspapers reported receiving about $32 million from legal ads in 2016 — and that legal-ad revenues have not declined over time to the same extent as other forms of advertising. For a medium-sized weekly newspaper in Massachusetts, legal ads can add up to tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Ed Miller, the publisher of The Provincetown Independent, says that the Arena-Rosa and Moran bills have come along at a time when newspapers are under more economic pressure than ever.

“There’s a lot of talk about how government should support local journalism, so it’s ironic that the Mass. Legislature is considering rescinding the requirement that towns place public notices in newspapers — not just on their own websites,” Miller told me by email. (Disclosure: I’m an advisory board member of the Local Journalism Project, a nonprofit that helps support the for-profit Independent.)

What if there’s no print newspaper?

The question of whether to require that public notices be published by news organizations is complicated by another issue that Rep. Arena-Rosa alluded to: There are significantly fewer print newspapers in Massachusetts than there were several decades ago. Should the law be changed so that the obligation to publish notices can be fulfilled if they appear only in digital-only news outlets? Ambrogi and Miller are wary.

“While the digital divide has narrowed, it’s still there for a significant number of older people especially, and research shows that what’s published in print is more readily understood and remembered than what’s seen on a screen,” Miller said. “It’s clear that civic engagement is higher where print newspapers have managed to survive. Don’t make it even harder for them.”

But that’s not practical everywhere, which is why a separate bill before the Legislature would allow for legal ads to be taken out in local news websites. The bill, House 2323, is sponsored by Rep. Alice Peisch, a Wellesley Democrat. Like the other two bills, it has been in third reading since last summer.

The wording is in flux; I’ve been advising Peisch’s office for the past year on what the final product might look like. But the intent is to find a way of allowing digital-only local news organizations to share in the revenue produced by public notices without harming print newspapers.

There are already a handful of communities covered by home-rule laws that allow digital-only as an option. But one statewide standard would be better.

As with any legislation, the details matter. What digital news outlets would be eligible? Virginia passed a law specifying certain criteria, such as employing local reporters, publishing regularly, and having been in business for at least two years. How can print publications be protected? A new law in Nebraska would allow the digital option “only in areas where no legal newspaper exists in the county or of general circulation.” (In Massachusetts, “county” could be changed to “municipality.”)

What matters is that the venerable tradition of ensuring independent transparency for the public’s business be preserved. Allowing state and local governments to abandon that tradition, while simultaneously harming financially strapped news organizations, would be a giant step in the wrong direction.

Dan Kennedy is a professor of journalism at Northeastern University, where he co-leads the project What Works: The Future of Local News. He is also a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s editorial advisory board.