Today the Senate Local Government Committee will be hearing AB 715 (Cabellero) which would allow cities to post adopted ordinances on their official city websites in lieu of adjudicated newspapers.

According to the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA) it would “kill the required publication in newspapers…key public notices”. But when AB 715 went to the assembly floor on May 14, 2009 it didn’t receive a single vote against it.

Existing law requires city clerks to publish an ordinance within 15 days after it has been adopted, with the names of the city council who voted for and against the bill. Or the city should it decide to, can just publish a summary of the ordinance.

To illustrate how old this law is and the necessity to bring publishing news into the 21st century, exsisting law requires that an ordinance be published in a “newspaper of general circulation, and if there is none, posted in at least three public places in the city or published in a newspaper … printed and published in the county”.

The CNPA is up in arms about AB 715 because it provides cities and counties the option to publish ordinances in mediums other than newspapers. Typically adjudicated newspaapers are newspapers filled with legal notices and legal advertising.

A letter just  so happened to come my way the other day, it was a letter of support from the Lake County News addressed to Assembly member Anna Caballero. In this letter Elizabeth Larson, Publisher and Editor of the online only Lake County News offers insight, “AB 715 ultimately will be meaningless if another step is not taken, allowing online only publications to become legally adjudicated”.

Larson continuing to provide insight, which shockingly enough isn’t found in any article referring to the bill, recommends that an overhaul of the adjudication process be considered in order to “benefit local governments and a broad number of  online enterprises…and prevent publishing monopolies and predatory pricing by newspapers”.

The average cots to a city to publish an ordinance is about $5,700 a year. About half of California’s 480 cities would benefit from this bill. This means that if this many cities spent this much money a year to publish ordinances in this increasingly antiquated means of retrieving information like these adjudicated newspapers, the cost to the California taxpayers would be to the sweet tune of around $1.3 million.

Larson ends the letter by saying that “a shift in adjudication laws, which have been tied to print…newspapers would be able to shift operations online…to make their operations more viable”.

Justin Smith is a freelance writer based in Sacramento. He can be reached at [email protected].