City Council votes for its website to be ‘official newspaper.’ It’s not a very good one | Opinion
I’ve written twice so far about how the majority of the Wichita City Council, the city attorney’s office and the strategic communications staff are opening a can of worms with their campaign to declare City Hall’s own website as the city’s “official newspaper,” so they can publish legal notices that are now published in The Eagle.
Throughout this time, I have been crystal clear that I don’t care whether the city publishes legal notices in The Eagle or not, but in the interest of transparency and security they should have to be published somewhere other than city-controlled media.
I went to Tuesday’s council meeting not really knowing what would come of this.
I did expect four members of the council — Mayor Lily Wu and council members Dalton Glasscock, J.V. Johnston and Brandon Johnson — to vote to take legal notices out of the paper. And they didn’t disappoint.
I also figured that council members Maggie Ballard and Mike Hoheisel would support continued publication of legal notices. Indeed, they voted no on the change.
What did surprise me was council member Becky Tuttle. She proposed an amendment, which passed, that would declare the city site as the official newspaper, but also require that the legal notices be duplicated in a printed publication serving the Wichita market.
It’s an intriguing idea. And my compliments to Tuttle for seeking a middle ground that would preserve the access to information that the citizens of this community deserve and have come to expect.
“I said consistently since the first time this item was brought to us that I’m not willing to sacrifice transparency for cost savings,” she said.
Color me impressed, because I know she’s been under a lot of pressure to vote the other way. The proposed change is a charter ordinance and needs five votes to pass, instead of the usual four, so Tuttle’s the swing vote.
I bounced Tuttle’s plan off Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association and one of the state’s leading experts on legal notices, and she did point out a couple of potential glitches.
One is that the city might actually wind up paying more for legal advertising. By state law, a designated official newspaper can charge cities for legal ads only at the lowest rate they charge any customer all year, including any sales or discounts.
That’s a good law, because nobody should be able to take advantage and turn legal notices into a cash cow. But that safeguard wouldn’t apply if the city website’s the official newspaper.
Also, she said, the city is taking on legal liabilities now borne by the newspaper, which is required to ensure that all official notices are accurate and on time and file legal affidavits to that effect. From here on out, that’s on the city, not whatever paper they publish notices in.
Claim that ransomware attack on city site not a ‘crash’
Along the way to the vote, Tyler Schiffelbein of the city communications staff objected to my saying in a column that the recent ransomware attack on the city’s computers crashed its website, calling into question whether it’s wise to make that the sole repository for legal notices.
Granted, you could get on the website during the attack if you knew how (you had to type the entire address, including www), but you couldn’t do much of anything, including paying your bills, signing up for activities or even booking your tee time. So pardon me for characterizing that as a “crash.”
Another complaint came from a guy named Vince Hancock, who identified himself as “a journalist and citizen documenter” with “the Wichita Journalism Collective.”
It’s actually the Wichita Journalism Collaborative. I know that because The Eagle’s a founding member and my wife is coordinator of the collaborative — although not the documenters project.
But setting that aside, Hancock accused me of “lying” and “facts-optional half truths,” because I wrote that the vote on legal notices was delayed because all the district advisory board meetings in May were canceled due to the computer hack.
Where’d I get that idea? From the city’s website.
The staff report for Tuesday’s meeting says this: “On May 28, 2024, due to cancellation of the DAB meetings for the month of May, the item was deferred until June 18, 2024. Presentations have now been made to each DAB at the June meetings.”
This has certainly taught me a lesson about trusting the future official newspaper.
We now know from Mr. Hancock that least two DAB meetings were held last month, because he said he was at them. But apparently those meetings were held without proper public notice.
I’m on the email list to receive all city meeting notifications and I only got one for DABs in the entire month of May.
It was for Glasscock’s DAB and his name’s on it, but the picture in the header is council member Johnston. Score two for the future official newspaper.
Frankly, I’m tired of all this nonsense.
The system wasn’t broken before. The city’s breaking it.
