County won't use newspapers for most legal advertisements — where will you find them?

Palm Beach County will no longer publish all of its legal advertisements in local newspapers, opting instead to utilize a new state law that allows legal ads to be placed on a county website. Municipalities can place their legal ads on the county web site as well.

The commission voted 4-2 to adopt an ordinance that The Palm Beach Post Executive Editor Rick Christie said was "a classic case of allowing the fox to guard the hen house." He told county commissioners that newspapers are the logical place to share information concerning legal ads and their continued use would ensure a much larger audience than would a county website.

The four commissioners who voted for the ordinance — Sara Baxter, Michael Barnett, Mayor Gregg Weiss and Marci Woodward — all pointed to the staff estimate of a savings of nearly $230,000 a year. Baxter pointed to a loss of subscribers at The Post. Christie, also Deputy Regional Editor for the USA Today Network-Florida, quickly corrected Baxter, saying the newspaper has been gaining subscribers, not losing them, adding: "I don't know where you are getting your information from but it is wrong."

The case for publishing legal ads in newspapers

The two commissioners who voted against adoption — Maria Sachs and Mack Bernard — agreed with Christie that it is important that an independent third party, such as a newspaper, publish the legal ads that, among other things, inform the public about changes in zoning laws and contracts that are placed out to bid.

Bernard noted that many seniors in the county still read newspapers' print editions. He said he is concerned that many of them will not see the legal ads if they are placed on a county web site.

Christie noted that The Post still has "a huge population of print readers, many of them older folks who have consumed a large diet of local news through print for decades. We, at the Post and Daily News, hear it every day, and never more than now as seniors still weigh huge issues of homeowners' insurance, and yes, still COVID-19."

Christie said the argument that these readers "will simply go online for critical information about what their governments are doing just doesn’t hold water and, in fact, would deprive them of this information. People in their 70s and 80s, in particular do not want to go digging through a government website for critical information about taxes, developments, comp plan changes, re-zonings or the like in or near their neighborhoods or other changes in regulations."

And Chadi Irani, general manager for The Post and Daily News, testified that legal ads placed in newspapers can be accessed through a statewide website maintained by the Florida Press Service. Someone looking for a legal ad knows to go there, he said.

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Mayor Gregg Weiss cast the pivotal tie-breaking vote, saying that passage will allow other public jurisdictions throughout the county to utilize it should they decide it would be beneficial. "Without approval, we would be denying them that opportunity," he said.

Weiss later told The Post, though, he is open to having "another discussion" as to whether all or some of the ads should go onto the county website.

When and why was the legal ad law changed?

The state law, pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-dominated state Legislature, eliminated the requirement that legal ads be placed in newspapers. Public entities need to pass an ordinance to stop the decades-old practice of placing the ads in newspapers.

Other counties throughout the state have also adopted the ordinance. Sarasota County commissioners adopted one this year. A spokesman for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune argued that the change will cause confusion and result in notices being missed by citizens.

When the law was debated, some lawmakers opposed to it argued that it was an effort to punish newspapers for publishing stories and editorials critical of the Republican leadership in Florida.

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In Palm Beach County, staff called for the change, noting that $248,000 a year was spent last year to place legal ads in newspapers, with much of that amount spent in The Post.

A county spokesman told The Post that staff will now determine whether all or some of the ads should be placed on the county website but County Administrator Verdenia Baker said it might be confusing if both mediums were used.

"My recommendation would be that it should be one or the other but not both," she said.

Manhattan-Kansas-based CivicPlus, LLC will work with the county to develop the website. The first year of the contract will cost taxpayers $20,000. Municipalities, depending on their population, would pay between $5,000 and $8,000 a year to use the site; special districts and constitutional offices, $5,000.

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Mike Diamond is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. He covers Palm Beach County government and transportation. You can reach him at mdiamond@pbpost.com. Help support local journalism. Subscribe today

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County to no longer use newspapers for most legal ads