California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that would have required local newspapers to publish government-mandated public notices on their websites.
The measure, Assembly Bill 2095, would have required those public notices to be available on a state-operated website as well as the newspaper’s own digital platform.
The bill was sponsored by the California News Publishers Association (CNPA), a trade organization representing print and digital news organizations in California, which argued the measure would help boost dwindling advertising revenue for newspapers by ensuring local government dollars continued flowing while embracing new delivery models for public notices.
“Maintaining public notice under the current framework with adding online publication of notices will help ensure news publishers can rely on this revenue stream as they contemplate other distribution methods to meet readers where they are,” the CNPA said.
The California Black Media opposed the measure, saying it had the potential to burden small, community-owned newspapers and digital newsrooms. The group wanted to see amendments to the measure “to ensure that AB 2095 does not create an undue burden [on] small and ethnic media.”
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In a veto message on Saturday, Newsom said he was siding with smaller newsrooms by blocking the measure from taking effect.
“I applaud the author’s attempt to provide an online repository to inform the public of the important matters covered in these legal notices,” Newsom wrote in the veto message. “However, I am concerned that this bill may require the state’s small community newspapers to hire additional personnel to upload notices and/or to pay for software tools to manage these uploads.”
Newsom said burdening smaller newsrooms with additional hires “are [not] costs that these small businesses — a vital and valuable source of local journalism — can bear.”
The governor encouraged the author and sponsors of the bill to “revisit this issue in subsequent legislation” that addresses the cost burden concern.
