My town government is kept offline and my taxes are kept up thanks to the dead tree lobby

I'm involved in local government in my town (Maplewood, NJ) and I'm always looking for ways for the town to save money in order to keep our outrageous property taxes under control. So I was heartened by a proposal for a state law permitting municipalities and individuals to publish legal notices on the town web site instead of in a local newspaper.

Legal notices are one of the main things keeping small, local newspapers in business. They're big, easy money. My dinky town has budgeted $20,000 for legal notices this year. The paper just has to reproduce the exact text provided to them; no sales, no editing, pretty much pure profit.

So A1083/S2072 ("Permits publication of legal notices by governments and individuals on official government website instead of newspaper") is really bad news for the news business. There's a local print paper in my town that's hanging on by a thread as things stand and they would certainly have to close their doors if this bill went through (no big loss if you ask me, it's a terrible paper).

But municipalities in New Jersey (and your state too) aren't exactly rolling in dough these days either, and that money they spend on those notices that almost nobody reads came out of your pocket, Mr. Taxpayer. This is 2011 so some members of the legislature figured towns should have an obvious efficiency available to them.

A point of legal clarification: Municipalities in New Jersey, and I believe in all states, are legally creations of state law and operate under laws passed by the state. In this specific case, there is a law that says municipalities must publish legal notices in publications with some level of local availability. So changes to this policy require a change in state law.

The bill seemed to be humming along. Last July it was reported out of the Senate committee on a 13-0 vote. This February it was reported out of the Assembly committee on a 4-1 vote. And then... it died. The legislature won't be considering it further.

Who killed the online legal notice bill? Was it the small town newspaper lobby? No, not according to well-placed government sources of mine: It was the Newark Star-Ledger, the largest-circulation newspaper in the state, sister publication to the Jersey Journal and Trenton Times, all of which are owned by Advance Publications.

As I hear it, the Star-Ledger went to the right people in the legislature and said that if this bill goes through, we're done for. Those notices are big money to the Star-Ledger. We're close to Newark, so Maplewood puts some notices in the Star-Ledger in addition to the local rag. I bet there are a couple dozen or more municipalities in the area that also post notices there. Nobody in the legislature wanted to go down as the ones that killed the Star-Ledger, assuming they weren't bluffing.

The ironic part, as I see it, is that among the legislative findings up top in the bill justifying it is the recognition that people don't read newspapers as much and that almost everyone is on the Internet. In other words, it makes sense for the people of New Jersey. You'd think their interests would be paramount to legislators.

Larry Seltzer is a freelance writer and consultant, dealing mostly with security matters. He has written recently for Infoworld, eWEEK, Dr. Dobb's Journal, and is a Contributing Editor at PC Magazine and author of their Security Watch blog. He has also written for Symantec Authentication (formerly VeriSign) and Lumension's Intelligent Whitelisting site.