In July, Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation that shifts the requirement for the posting of public notices from newspapers to a local government’s own online website.

Notices that have for years flowed from local government entities to news outlets like the Herald for public access and display on websites and print editions of newspapers will after March 1, 2026, be placed not in independent third-party
newspapers but rather on the websites of the very entities that are required by law to inform the public of their actions.

Why the change? We are told the Legislature in its wisdom wanted to modernize the access to this information by moving it away from print media and toward digital platforms. We are also assured that the move will save taxpayer money by eliminating unnecessary payments to newspapers as third-party brokers of the information.

The new law also guarantees, or so we are also told, that citizens can access the required postings from anywhere at anytime without a subscription to a physical newspaper or a trip to the local clerk’s office.

Lastly, the impetus for quick movement of the legislation, which went from introduction to approval in 10 days, was the announced closure of several newspapers, including The Star Ledger’s print operations, causing a new need for a mechanism to disseminate public information.

These are the explanations given for a step that further erodes public oversight of local government in New Jersey. With Murphy’s signature on the bill, municipalities will now be able to meet their legal requirement to post such notices by placing them on their own websites.

Newspapers have long been the independent oversight group, a third party that controls the information from its receipt from the municipality through the required length of the posting period, the archiving and the subsequent access to those archives for much longer than the one year mandated under the new law.

If there is a change to what is initially sent by the municipality, in the present system it goes through a process that not only posts the change but creates an auto trail that itself becomes a part of the record of the notice.

In short, under the existing system that makes use of newspapers, the entity that posts, controls changes to, archives and provides access to the postings is separate from the control of the local government entity that is legally required to make the information public.

Oh, one might say, but these added layers of access and protection cost taxpayers money. So we have been told. The reality is that decades have passed since the state raised the limits on what newspapers can charge for legal notice postings.

The Herald in a given year deals with 140 different public entities for legal notices, provides handling by individuals well versed in the legal requirements of dealing with such notices, and provides free public access to them. Revenue? $150,000 per year, a hair over an average of $1,000 per year per entity, many of which make multiple postings over that year that are inclusive in that $1,000 average figure.

This is not a big money-maker or a taxpayer saver. In fact, the municipalities, and their taxpayers, lose the economies of scale a newspaper provides and in its place puts an already overworked clerk’s office.

If one could follow the costs of additional duties for clerks, as well as information technology changes and maintenance, along with the new hyperlink webpage that must be created and maintained by the secretary of state, which local entities must update, the prospect of savings for taxpayers becomes significantly less hopeful.

What is this information we are talking about? The bill defines local notices as “any resolution, official proclamation, notice or advertisement of any sort, kind, or character, including proposals for bids on public work and otherwise, required by law or by the order or rule of any court to be published by a public entity, corporation, an individual, or any other entity.”

These are things like notices of budgets, ordinances up for adoption, notices of meetings and hearings, lien sales, bid opportunities and the like.

The bill, as noted, moved through the Legislature in 10 days. It was reminiscent of the rapid movement of the bill that made changes to the Open Public Records Act the year before, placing clear disincentives before any member of the public who seeks what should be public information.

We join with Brett Ainsworth, president of the New Jersey Press Association, who said this new law takes away information from the very places people seek it out – independent news media. Ainsworth added, “Doing so diminishes transparency and erodes trust in government.”