Warren County Commissioners lament cost of newspaper legal ads

A Warren County commissioner is questioning why taxpayers are spending nearly $22,000 to post legal notices in two daily newspapers that reach about one percent of the population.

Under archaic state law, local governments are required to place public notices of meetings, procurements, and ordinances in newspapers.

Commissioner James R. Kern III (R-Pohatcong) said the Star-Ledger told him that just 1,335 Warren County residents receive their daily newspaper — and 2,546 on Sundays.    The county’s other designated newspaper for legal ads, the Daily Record, was unable to answer questions about their circulation in Warren.

The forced expenditures for legal ads – some have called them taxpayer subsidies for newspapers – are still required, even when coverage of local news is not.

“In a world where there’s a lot of things going on,” Kern said.  ‘There’s really no coverage… we’re advertising our official notices.  Who’s actually reading them?”

Warren County’s Facebook page has over 7,000 followers, according to Kern.  Ideally, Kern said, county and municipal governments would just place their ads online and save the taxpayers “tens of thousands of dollars.””

The county commissioners last week authorized their administrator to review the cost of legal ads and to pursue Kern’s suggestion that legal ads run only in the Sunday newspaper when nearly twice as many copies of the Star-Ledger are sold in Warren County.

County Commissioner Jason Sarnoski noted that there were no print media reporters at their meeting last week.

“I believe print media is dead,” Sarnoski stated.  “When I started as a commissioner, we had a person from the (Star-Ledger-owned) Express-Times here at every single meeting. It just doesn’t exist.”

County officials also complained that they sometimes have trouble placing legal notices because newspaper employees don’t always respond to calls.