Citizens’ Campaign Joins Fight Against Public Notices Bill
By Jon Whiten • Jul 29th, 2010 • Category: Blog, News, Politics
Statewide good-government group the Citizens’ Campaign today became the latest organization to come out against a proposal to allow municipalities to post public notices on the web, rather than in local newspapers.
Saying the legislation will bring “less competition and less integrity in the government,” the nonprofit joins the New Jersey Press Association and the NJ Sierra Club in opposing the bill, which cleared a Senate committee last week and could mean trouble for many local newspapers.
Harry Pozycki, the chair of the Citizens’ Campaign, says the group is concerned about the lack of a permanent record online, noting that “in today’s fast-paced wireless world, websites can be edited or deleted by a single click of a mouse, with little or no oversight.”
He also argues that municipalities reach a broader pool of potential bidders when they solicit bids and proposals via print newspapers than they would by doing the same on their own websites.
“When the talk of Trenton is government waste-cutting,” says Pozycki, “we should be encouraging increased competition for lower cost contracts, not limiting it.”
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Jon Whiten is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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