Like clockwork, efforts to weaken public notice requirements appear before the state’s legislature routinely. The proposed alternatives often are flawed and often would make a system that has worked for generations weaker, not stronger.

Requiring boards and councils that need to be accountable to the public to be accessible to the public is tantamount. The connection between accountability and accessibility means our current model requiring the notices be carried by independent platforms is crucial. Allowing a township to instruct its own staff to post notices on a website owned and operated by the township presents too much risk of information being slanted or skewed to protect the interests of politicians — not taxpayers. It also fragments where a constituent, wishing to remain informed, would have to go. A father or mother in Lycoming County may live in one borough, work in a different township, have children enrolled in a school district and have questions about the priorities of their county government — that’s four different websites at just this stage.

The long-standing law mandating that these government bodies place legal notices in their local newspaper is a proven approach to ensuring one avenue of that accessability, accountability and independence.

The Sun-Gazette participates in publicnoticepa.com, an free online database of legal notices, so that the cost of a copy of the day’s newspaper — which we would argue is reasonable itself — is not an obstacle to voters staying informed. And the revenue from the ads is, in part, how we fund our coverage of your local government.

The unfortunate truth is that many of the Sun-Gazette’s would-be competitors, who suggest that their websites or unsolicited mailings would suffice for legal notices simply have no interest in sending journalists to your school board, county commissioner, city council or other municipal meetings — certainly not as consistently and thoroughly as the Sun-Gazette does.

While we are open to changes that improve accessibility and transparency, dismissiveness about the role legal notices — and specifically newspapers — play in ensuring transparency will not make our government more accountable.