Details matter
-
Kurt Johnson
Details matter. Transparency in government policy making and operations matters. And so too does having a resource for taxpayers to connect the dots and be informed.
With those goals in mind, the Nebraska Press Association has launched a new website providing greater public access and notification to the workings of all government entities and courts in Nebraska. The Aurora News-Register fully supports this effort and in fact is one of many contributing parties, sharing legal notices which originate on ANR pages with any and all who wish to view the information in our state, nation and for that matter across the vast cyber universe.
NPA’s new public notices website, which you’ll find at www.nepublicnotices.com, now offers a useful tool that helps interested parties search for information from their own communities by keyword, type of notice, as well as by date, publication, county, city, school or village. That’s a huge advantage and time-saver for anyone seeking out specific information.
There are already 90,000 notices on the site, which launched in June of last year, and the goal is to have 100 percent of all public notices in Nebraska available online going forward, all posted within 24 to 48 hours after debuting in print. That represents a major step forward, as an aggregation of public notices from all units of government and courts simply did not exist before this site was launched.
Public notices which appear on our pages each week are chock full of useful and detailed information, so much in fact that it’s hard to keep track of it all.
Our news staff monitors public notices on a regular basis, which frequently leads to story ideas involving new business start-ups, tax-funded government project bidding, school/county/city/village spending reports, liquor license requests, previews for pending public hearings or council/board meetings, and so much more. It’s part of our job to read the fine print, so to speak, and yet catching all the minute details that may lead to bigger stories of public interest is a massive challenge.
That challenge just got a whole lot easier with leadership and funding from Nebraska newspapers, and shared use of technology.
In a world where we want and expect transparency and accountability from our government leaders, this resource is invaluable.
-- Kurt Johnson
