Media activists slam bid to end print tax notices in Arkansas

Rule wastes counties’ cash, legislation sponsor argues

Media advocates are criticizing a bill that would end a requirement that counties publish in a local newspaper a list of people who are delinquent on paying real estate taxes on their mineral rights.

Mineral rights refer to ownership in underground resources of real estate, such as oil and gas deposits and ores. Those who own mineral rights must pay real estate property taxes on them.

Tom Larimer, executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, said Monday that his organization would campaign against Senate Bill 114.

"If you're a property owner and if you don't even know that you're supposed to be paying taxes on your mineral rights -- if those aren't published somewhere and you don't find out about it -- you could lose your mineral rights without knowing that you had them at risk," he said.

But Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, who is sponsoring the bill, and the Association of Arkansas Counties, which supports it, say it would save the counties money.

The public notices cost $1.50 each and must be published twice, said Josh Curtis, governmental affairs director for the association. While delinquent taxpayers who pay up reimburse the counties for the notification cost, many never pay, he said.

"The taxpayer may only owe a dollar," he said. "A lot of time the publication cost far outweighs the total base tax cost."

SB114 directs the Association of Arkansas Counties to create a website to host the list. Counties would be required to publish a notice of the website's availability in a local newspaper.

Curtis said the association would not charge counties to use the website. He said he did not have a statewide estimate of the cost of public notices to counties.

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Larimer said Arkansas Press Association member newspapers already upload the notices to publicnoticeads.com/AR for free, but the print publication is especially important for the state.

"There's a lack of connectivity to the Internet in Arkansas. There are a large number of people in Arkansas who have no connectivity with the Internet who would never see these public notices," he said.

"Even if they had connectivity, they'd never see them unless they made a special effort to go to a government website, and that's just not something that happens."

But Hester, the bill's sponsor, said it doesn't make sense to pay for the individual notices for delinquent mineral rights taxes in particular. Like Curtis, he said the unpaid taxes are often minuscule.

"Does it just make good fiscal sense to spend $3 or $2 to post a notice of 80 cents [in taxes owed]? If it costs more money to post it than there's actually owed, then pretty well every Arkansan can understand that it just doesn't make a lot of sense," he said.

"There's still notice by putting the website down. If people want to go look, they can find it."

During the last regular session in 2015, lawmakers approved a public notice bill that freed the state auditor's office from advertising lengthy lists of unclaimed property in newspapers in all 75 Arkansas counties.

The bill freed taxpayers from a roughly $225,000 annual price tag that came with running the lists in local newspapers.

Lawmakers in other states also have considered ending requirements that public notices be published in newspapers.

New Jersey Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto sponsored a bill to end a requirement that any legal notice be published in a newspaper. He failed to muster the votes needed for passage, according to media reports, but vowed to revive the bill this year.

New Jersey publishers said that bill -- which dealt with all legal notices -- would lead to hundreds of layoffs, but Larimer said ending the print publication of the names of people who are delinquent on their mineral rights taxes is not a "big issue" for newspapers' bottom line.

"This would be a very small percentage in revenue for a newspaper," Larimer said. "Anytime you lose revenue at any small business, it's going to hurt, but it's not like it's going to force the closure of a lot of newspapers by doing that."

Metro on 01/17/2017

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