Bill would end practice of requiring government notices in newspaper

Government transparency advocates are aligning against legislation that would remove public notices from local newspapers across the state.

Freshman Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a Bedford Republican, is proposing that governments be allowed to post notices about meetings, taxes and policies on their websites instead. Stickland said that the measure would save governments money and that newspaper notices are no longer effective.

“The law that requires public notices to be printed in a newspaper made sense back in the horse and buggy days,” Stickland said in a recent written statement announcing the bill. “It’s outrageous that taxpayers have to pay twice