NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council spent more than a half hour Tuesday evening discussing whether or not to put allowed legal notices solely on their website and not print some of them any longer in the Hutchinson News.
The charter ordinance that would begin the process of rolling back the printing of some legal notices ended on a 3-2 vote, with Mayor Greg Fast and council members Jon Richardson and Scott Meggers voting in favor and Vice-Mayor Stacy Goss and council member Steve Garza voting against. Because a change in a charter ordinance requires a two-thirds majority and not a simple majority, that means that the motion failed and the official publication will remain the same for now.
The item ended up being a wide-ranging discussion. Current Hutchinson Tribune owner and operator Michael Glenn, despite the fact that his publication is online only, passionately advocated for the presence of legal notices in a physical newspaper.
Glenn believes that having them in the paper that is not owned or controlled by a governmental entity is an important point in favor of government transparency.
No one on the council argued that the Hutchinson News, as currently constituted, is an effective newspaper, but with no other alternative that fulfills legal requirements and has physical media, it is and was the way it has been done.
Those voting in favor of the charter ordinance see it as a way to trim costs without effectively reducing the reach of the government notices, because they have confidence in city staff and in the public to use the city's website for that purpose when an issue arises that needs to be published.
According to agenda documents, the city still intends to have on its website
1. Immediate and timely publications.
2. Entire ordinances, resolutions and other public notices on the website will appear without summaries.
3. The publications will appear on the City’s existing website without additional cost.
4. The citizens have the ability to request notices by email of new publications appearing on the website.
Those things will all still happen, in addition to the physical publication that will remain.