By Charles Young, The Exponent Telegram
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — On Monday, members of the House Judiciary Committee debated a proposed bill that would change the rules and requirements for publishing legal advertisements in the state’s newspapers.
House Bill 4025, Creating a State Central Legal Advertising Website, would establish a new website managed by the state Auditor’s Office where legal notices — such as the announcement of levy elections or public hearings on proposed municipal ordinances — would be published for free.
Legal advertisements are currently required to run in a local newspaper for one, two or three weeks (depending on whether they are a Class I, Class II or Class III advertisement).
The proposed bill would create new state code stating that Class II and Class III legal advertisements need to run in a newspaper for only one week if they are also published on the new website, according to Justin Fisher, Judiciary Committee counsel.
The Auditor’s Office would be required to provide a digital affidavit to the advertiser verifying publication, Fisher said.
A fiscal note attached to the bill shows it would cost the Auditor’s Office $15,000 in fiscal year 2021 to launch and operate the website, Fisher said.
The bill does not mandate legal advertisements be published on the Auditor’s Office website, and there is nothing in the bill prohibiting advertisers from publishing their notices only in print media, Fisher said.
Aaron Allred, West Virginia legislative auditor, said a survey conducted by his office shows millions of dollars in annual spending on legal advertising by municipalities and state agencies.
“We did a survey of state agencies, all 55 counties, all 55 country schools and the 10 largest municipalities in the state of West Virginia,” Allred said. “We got a 100% response rate back from all of them. In fiscal year 2019, $4.6 million was spent by state government, counties, county school boards and municipalities on legal ads.”
Newspaper circulation in West Virginia has declined 50% since 2012, Allred said.
“Newspaper circulation has dropped dramatically,” he said. “We’re now at the point where only 19 counties in the state of West Virginia have a daily newspaper. Even the largest newspaper in the state in the largest county in the state (The Charleston Gazette-Mail) does not publish a print edition of the newspaper on Monday.”
The bill strikes a compromise between how older and younger people prefer to get their news, Allred said.
“It reaches a good balance between newspapers, which tend to be the purview of older individuals, and also throwing out legal ads on the internet, which tends to be the presence of those people under the age of 40,” he said.
Don Smith, executive director of the West Virginia Press Association, said the bill’s passage would limit the ability of average West Virginians to readily access important legal notices.
“This bill reduces public notice,” he said. “The newspaper notification is notification presented to the public in their community. Your bill would put two-thirds of that on a government website where these people have to come and see it. They have to know it’s going to be there, go find it and look at it. Newspaper publication is disseminated in the community. It provides public notification, not the private notification that you’re talking about.”
While Allred’s statistics about the number of “daily” newspapers in the state are accurate, they don’t account for weekly newspapers, Smith said.
“We have a qualified newspaper in every county, and out of our 72 newspapers, the remaining 50-some are weekly newspapers,” he said. “They are qualified and carry legals in all their counties.”
Allred’s figure about declining circulation numbers doesn’t factor in online audiences, Smith said.
“That doesn’t address our online editions at all,” he said. “If we’re doing online editions, that’s increasing the readership. The readership of West Virginia newspapers has never been greater.”
All of the state’s daily newspapers except for one have an online presence, Smith said.
“We have 40-some newspapers that have online publications, and more adding on every day,” he said.
Some of the newspapers with an online presence publish legal notifications to their websites, Smith said.
“For the ones that don’t, the newspaper industry, through the Press Association, has developed several years ago a website that we try to post those to also,” he said.
According to information the Press Association obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, almost every county generates “substantial” revenue from the publication fees associated with legal advertising, Smith said.
“Boone County, they paid $4,923.81 for publication fees to the newspaper. The information that they provided us, the fees generated $69,725. Another example, Monroe County paid $13,382 to newspapers to publish their legals. That generated $53,379.”
Following nearly an hour of debate on the bill, Committee Chair John Shott, R-Mercer, established a subcommittee to be chaired by Del. Brandon Steele, R-Mercer, the bill’s lead sponsor.
“It’s obvious that we’re going to need to some further development on this bill,” Shott said. “There appears to be some information that might need to be reconciled.”
The subcommittee met Monday afternoon and discussed several proposed comprises, including potentially delaying the bill’s implementation until 2023.
— Senior Staff Writer Charles Young can be reached at 304-626-1447 or [email protected]