today’s news and information gleanings from here and there!

Quote for today… “Who reads them?”- “Harrisburg woman, whose mother and disabled brother each had $100,000 invested” with now deceased and disbarred attorney who stole the life savings of his investors in this Harrisburg Patriot-News article.

• Indeed, who reads them! Does anyone read the little classified notices usually printed in the back pages of a publication of general circulation? Long-standing federal and state government laws recognized that the public has a right to be notified of certain government and government related actions. The publication of “Any advertisement, notice, statement, report, resolution, ordinance, or abstract of the same, required by law, rule, order or decree of court, by resolution of any board of directors, shareholders or officers of any corporation or unincorporated association, or any government unit to be printed and published for a valuable consideration in a newspaper.”

• What if legal notices were posted online? Well, there are proponents of that. They cite cost savings for government. They cite increased “audience reach” if someone has access to a computer. They cite convenience and more. Legal-Notice.org, for instance, keeps a running “log” money that would of “would have been saved dollars by saying ‘If this site were designated as an “Official”, free, publication outlet for public notices, small businesses and taxpayers would have saved this amount since our inception.’”

• Anyone who’s attended council meetings has heard councillors question whether a discussed action item “has to be published” or a borough manager or mayor bemoan the cost of legal advertising. If anyone thinks that telling citizens about government actions is expensive, wonder whether they’ve considered the cost of not telling citizens?

• The Columbia Borough School District has published a LEGAL NOTICE in today’s Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era soliciting proposals for the “Taylor Elementary Paving Project.” Kudos to the School District because information about that proposal is shown at the School District’s Website.

• And anyone who’s meandered around the pages of a non-transparent, non-citizen-focused government Website knows full well that information that ought to be known and accessible is not. For instance, does it not make sense for governments to publish their own legal notices on their own Websites right now? Why don’t they? There’s no real cost to do that.

• “if it’s there, then it’s transparent.”BallotPedia’s recommends that “City (borough, town, village) residents and taxpayers need to be able to adequately gauge whether a government is:
  • Effective.
  • Competent.
  • Frugal with tax revenues
  • In compliance with all expectations and relevant laws about public records and open meetings.

  In order for this to happen, residents and taxpayers should expect to find key information on any municipality’s website. [NOTE: BallotPedia is a successor to The Sunshine Review.]

• In Columbia: “Unusual home delivery scam has police stumped” – WGAL-TV8

• Shining “sunshine” into Medicare payments: This extract – “A disproportionate share of the payments went to a small cadre of doctors and providers” – from an article in the Harrisburg Patriot-News points out some medical payment irregularities.

• There’s a column in today’s Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era about the bad decision to run a natural gas pipeline along the western part of the county. The columnist identifies the potential risk to the Susquehanna River. He asks, whether the pipeline could “be moved to the east.” Isn’t a potential pipeline leak environmentally catastrophic no matter where it is?

• We wonder … why the photos in some local media of the two “teens facing trial for home invasion” in West Hempfield Township show two “nice portraits” rather than the mug shots that others arrested for misdeeds get. We’re not alone, LIPNews asks the question, too.

• Need examples? Just look at these mug shots that The Morning Call publishes.

• Comcast pretends to be on your side – Bloomberg View