Lawmakers looking to remove archaic newspaper-of-record mandate

Info easily found on gov. websites and could save La Crosse thousands a year.

Wisconsin state lawmakers are working at making inroads on the archaic practice of forcing cities, school districts and other local governments to post their meeting minutes in the so-called newspaper of record.

Some are proposing to do away with the mandate. They argue that those minutes are easily available on local government websites.

The city of La Crosse, alone, plans to spend about $30,000 this year on state mandated newspaper publishing. About $4,000 of which is spent on publishing meeting minutes.

A newspaper of record harkens back to nearly the days of horses and saddles. 

The idea: Local governments have to publish a record of their activities officially – like a law isn’t a law, until it’s in the newspaper of record. 

You want to know what happened at that school board meeting you missed? It will be in the newspaper of record – eventually.

So, the bill would do away with, at least, the published minutes mandate.

It’s a big money saver for local governments. Maybe a big hit for newspapers, which would see another classified section money maker disappear.

Other publishing mandates – meeting notices, assessments, that kind of thing – would not be affected by the change.