A legislative committee on Tuesday narrowly rejected a bill that would have given government entities the option of posting bid notices on a website instead of in a newspaper.
The voice vote was nearly indistinguishable, but the chairman of the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs, Sen. Ronald Caldwell, R-Wynne, declared the nays victors. The committee spent more than an hour hearing testimony and debating Senate Bill 409 by Sen. Scott Flippo, R-Bull Shoals.
"This is going to save the counties money. This is going to save the cities money. It's going to save the schools money. This is going to save the taxpayers money," Flippo said. "Who it's going to cost money is going to be the press, especially the print media. And I understand their objections to this bill and if I'm in their position, I'd probably be up here speaking against it myself. My responsibility as a legislator is not to the media; it is to the taxpayers and to make sure they're getting the best bang for their buck."
Flippo pulled the bill last week after Lynn Hamilton, president of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and Ashley Wimberley, the executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, testified against the bill. They said Flippo had not discussed the measure with them before trying to put it through committee.
The bill would allow government entities, including the state, cities, counties and school districts, to accept bids electronically and to publish the required legal notices for contracts and purchases on a website of their choosing instead of in a newspaper.
[RELATED: Complete Democrat-Gazette coverage of the Arkansas Legislature]
The legal advertisements have been a longtime source of advertising revenue for newspapers. Current law requires public entities to publish legal notices in a newspaper and accept only sealed, hard-copy bids.
Hamilton told the committee that SB409 would devastate the state's newspaper industry and the proposed process would keep the public out of the bidding process.
"This will have major, far-reaching effects on people doing biddings. It will have major, far-reaching effects on people trying to learn about public notices. And obviously it will have far-reaching effects on the newspaper industry," Hamilton said. "We have 109 newspapers in Arkansas. If this passes, becomes legislation, it will mean more layoffs at newspapers."
Representatives with the Association of Arkansas Counties, the County Judges Association of Arkansas and the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators all spoke for SB409.
Jason Carter, an attorney with the Arkansas Municipal League, thanked Flippo for sponsoring the bill and said the organization supports the change.
"We have a duty of stewardship to the people that we represent. To the extent that we can reduce cost and still have transparency and still have fair competition, we should do that," Carter said. "I don't know whether web-based bidding is going to reduce our costs or not. I don't know that is going to satisfy the need that we have, but it might. And I think that it's worthy to have that option on the table to explore it."
A Section on 03/20/2019