Polk County Commission votes to keep public notices in newspapers - for now

After impassioned pleas from some community members and local media outlets, the Polk County Commission voted to continue to advertise important public business in newspapers.

With a 3-2 vote, a proposal to stop putting public notices in newspapers and instead launch a county-run website to post them died – at least for now.

The vote occurred Tuesday during a regularly scheduled meeting – which had been advertised in a newspaper – of the Polk County Commission at the County Administration Building in Bartow.

Commission Chairman George Lindsey and Commissioners Martha Santiago and Neil Combee voted against circumventing newspapers by creating the county website for public notices. Combee's vote was surprising, considering his public comments seemed to be in favor of the proposal. During the commissioner comment part of the meeting, Combee seemed confused about the vote he had cast earlier.

During an exchange between Combee and Lindsey, the chair explained, “The decision today was to stay the course as we are today.”

Combee responded: “I believe you, but that is not what I wanted.”

Lindsey said the matter could return as an agenda item at an upcoming meeting if that is what Combee chooses to do. After hearing Combee's thoughts, Lindsey said it sounded like Combee might be interested in a "hybrid" solution – still advertising in the newspaper, with the additional step of posting information to a county website.

Historically, governmental boards have been required to purchase notices in local newspapers to announce upcoming meetings that involve things such as budgets, taxes and land-use changes, among others. In 2022, the Florida legislature passed a bill, which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, that loosened that requirement, allowing a public website for notices instead.

Several people spoke on the issue at Tuesday's meeting.

Valla Dana Treuman, a retired teacher from Winter Haven, said as elected officials, the County Commission needed to embrace opportunities to be transparent with public information.

“When I heard that we as citizens have to fight for our right to know what the public notices are, I was rather amazed and shocked that our county commissioners would actually consider removing public notices from the public eye in our newspapers where they have been for over 250 years,” Treuman said.

Combee countered Treuman, saying none of his colleagues on the board wanted to block the public from information. He said most people in the county had internet access and could see the notices on the government-run website.

Others argued the elderly would be among those unable to read internet notices because they are not connected.

Jim Fogler, president of the Florida Press Association, representing about 170 media outlets across the state, said the Polk County measure would result in less transparency about public information.

“Floridians in Polk County will either not know or be less informed about what their government is doing, taking us backward, not forward,” Fogler said. “Newspaper websites are usually the highest-traffic sites in the communities we serve."

He also noted that the FPA had partnered with tech partner Column to help newspapers implement the new state law and place all government notices on one website, floridapublicnotices.com, which is free for public use.

Nancy Solliday, representing Gannett Media Inc., which owns The Ledger and News Chief, said Gannett is the largest local media company in the United States with 218 daily newspapers and 168 million unique website visitors every month. She said the company was “heavily invested in Florida” with 26 publications and websites statewide. Gannett has a large printing press and distribution network based in Lakeland that prints newspapers for the Orlando Sentinel and New York Times, among a total of 11 daily newspapers.

There are hundreds of Gannett employees in Polk County who are working in support of a free press, she said.

“A free press, as you know, is necessary for the public to make informed decisions, hold our leaders accountable and hear a diversity of opinions,” she said.

Solliday said the average website lifespan is two years and seven months, so new versions of the website would be needed, costing more money down the road. Further, websites that are not constantly boosted with funding to drive traffic to them often die out.

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David Dunn-Rankin of D-R Media and Investments LLC, which publishes seven Sun Newspapers around Florida, including editions in the Four Corners, Winter Haven and a Polk County edition, has offered to save the county money by offering most legal notices free of charge, both in print and online.

He also has offered to build the county a website for public notices for free.

“Our bid for a fully operational website is free – F-R-E-E, free.... Our offer saves the taxpayers money,” Dunn-Rankin said.

He said there was confusion over a Sun offer to publish required public notices free and additional money for non-required notices. For instance, he said the county spends about $150,000 on public notices. About $30,000 is for ads the county would still be required to place in newspapers, but he offered to publish for free. About $45,000 is for ads that would be allowed to go all digital under the new law. Those too would be free. The last $75,000 is for ads paid for by parties other than taxpayers -- such as developers. Those, he said, would still be charged the going rate for legal ads.

“Apples to apples, it is still more expensive for the government to do this,” Dunn-Rankin said. “The reason I am offering for free is I think the way newspapers have done this traditionally can be improved.”

According to a Polk County spokeswoman, once the government website is built out, the total cost to manage it would be about $30,000 a year. The county has expended $10,000 so far on a new website. The county pays about $100,000 for all public notices it places in local newspapers.

"That cost would have been divided out among all the organizations that used it to post their notices," said Mianne Nelson, county communications director of the annual cost.

Had the vote gone the other way, the county website would not have contained ads from third parties such as Google, Nelson said. But an "appropriate" amount of search engine optimization, which allows people to easily search for its webpages, would be started once the new website was live, which would have been this fall.

An alternative that would keep ads in local newspapers but also post them online for Polk County came from businessman David Dunn-Rankin of DR Media and Investments LLC in Venice, which publishes three Sun Newspapers including a Polk County edition and two others in Winter Haven and Four Corners.

Retired Ledger reporter Tom Palmer, who writes for the Ancient Islands Group of the Sierra Club and sometimes speaks on environmental issues at county meetings, said during public comments that the move was all about hurting local community newspapers because of politics in Tallahassee.

“Let’s cut to the chase, this isn’t about how much it costs,” Palmer said. “This is about stickin’ it to the hometown newspaper and cutting their bottom line. That’s the net effect of this change.

“It came out of Tallahassee," he said. "Some of the leaders out there have an ongoing war with the media, which is fine. But let’s go from the macro to the micro, this is in our community, this is how this effects local businesses. That’s what you need to keep in mind when you consider this.”

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Polk commissioner vote against making public notices digital only