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West Virginia Senate committee rejects attempt at changing legal ad process

West Virginia's Capitol dome is shown in Charleston, W.Va. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner, File)

CHARLESTON — After a three-year hiatus, lawmakers in West Virginia once again rejected a bill to create a legal advertisement database and potentially take away a long-established role of community newspapers.

In a voice vote, the state Senate Finance Committee voted to not recommend Senate Bill 891 for passage to the full Senate Tuesday afternoon one day after the bill was first introduced, meeting a deadline within Senate rules for Senate bills to be introduced.

SB 891 would have created a state central legal advertising website managed by the State Auditor’s Office. The website would have served as a free-for-the-public platform for legally required advertisements beginning Jan. 1, 2026. The bill would require the State Auditor to create an electronic affidavit for legal advertisers to show proof that the legal ad was published on the new website.

According to State Code, a legal advertisement means “any notice, advertisement, statement, information or other matter required by law or court to be published.” Legal advertisements are required to be published in qualified daily or weekly newspapers.

“West Virginia’s Constitution requires that the citizens be kept informed of certain aspects of government, particularly those functions involving the spending of public funds,” according to an annual handbook published by the West Virginia Press Association. “This is the ultimate basis for laws that require the publication of legal advertisements in more than 400 situations.”

There are different classes of legal advertisements. Class I legal advertisements are published one time. Class II legal advertisements are published once a week for two successive weeks. Class III legal advertisements are published once a week for three successive weeks. There are also class I-0, II-0, and III-0 legal ads.

State Code sets the rates that newspapers can charge for legal ads based on the number of words and the circulation size of the newspaper the legal ads are being placed in, though discounts are often offered.

The bill would have created incentives for using the state central legal advertising website for class II and III legal ads instead of newspapers, though use of the website by county and city governments would have been optional. If a Class II or Class III advertisement is published on the state website, the required publication frequency in traditional newspapers is reduced to once for one week.

A successful amendment to the bill offered by state Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, would have prohibited county and city governments from charging citizens publication fees and costs for legal ads if the government chose to use the state central legal advertising website.

Bills dealing with changing how legal ads are handled in West Virginia have been introduced nearly every year in the Legislature since 2019, attempting to create alternative means of publication. In 2022, a similar bill was recommended by the House Government Organization Committee but was never taken up by the House Judiciary Committee.

The Legislative Auditor’s Office released a report in 2019 claiming that city, county and state governments would save money by submitting legal advertisements to a centralized free website managed by the state, as well as give West Virginians more access to legal advertisements.

In 2021, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 642, creating a separate public notice database maintained by the State Auditor’s Office for all legal notices and specific to state government. Though a review of posted legal notices found many notices with less than 10 views and several notices with zero views.

“There’s the Auditor’s website right now out there. It exists. Go check it right now and see how many people have been using it since 2021,” said Doug Skaff Jr., the president of HD Media and interim executive director of the West Virginia Press Association. “We did it as a test in 2021 to see if anyone would go to this Auditor’s-ran website…We’ve tried it for four years.”

The West Virginia Press Association already manages a statewide website for legal notices at wvlegals.com, which includes legal ads from member newspapers.

“That website, I’d like to report, is an overwhelming success,” Skaff said. “In the last 30 days, 100,000 people visited wvlegals.com to check for public notices. It’s working. It’s been working.”

Supporters of these bills believe they will save state and local governments taxpayer money, though many local governments make money off the fees they charge to entities for the legal advertisements.

“I don’t think we’re taking away; I think we’re adding to,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh. “It does give an option for online for our counties to be able to stretch their tax dollars farther. It’s not a requirement…I think a lot of those who don’t have access to online, they don’t have access to a newspaper being delivered at their house either.”

Opponents of these bills, such as the West Virginia Press Association (of which this newspaper is a member), claim that reducing the time that certain legal notices can remain published if they’re also submitted to the centralized website would reduce public transparency, not increase transparency.

Another issue is the lack of access to high-speed broadband in certain parts of the state, making ready access to a centralized website difficult. But providing an incentive for counties and cities to reduce the number of legal ads they place in newspapers would likely cause smaller weekly newspapers to close, adding to the number of news deserts in the state.

“It’s no secret; a lot of these small-town weekly newspapers benefit from having legal and public notices in their paper,” Skaff said. “What would happen if they went away? What would happen if they were not fully notified? Do we want to be more transparent or less transparent?

“Would newspapers go away…absolutely they would go away,” Skaff continued. “Jobs would go away and newspapers would go away, especially in those smaller communities.”

Opposition to SB 891 in the Senate Finance Committee was bipartisan, with committee members raising concerns about the reduced transparency for legal ads. State Sen. Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, argued that certain industries, such as the natural gas industry, would push to have their legal ads placed on the state website and property owners might not know their mineral rights are being sold on the courthouse steps.

“When they get that weekly paper, they read every single word in that paper,” Clements said. “I had a call from a woman in Washington state. She called me and told me because of the notice in the local paper, her neighbor saw it. Her gas rights were going to be sold on the courthouse steps. She was able to redeem those things because they were in the paper.”

“People are going to miss out on opportunities to be aware of the things that they now can monitor in the Wayne County News, the Logan Banner, the Williamson Daily News,” said Senate Minority Leader Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell. “I really feel like we’re doing a disservice to those elderly people or middle age people or young people who just don’t have the access.”

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com

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