Every year, Pennsylvania’s townships celebrate “Sunshine Week” to highlight the vital importance of open government. But as we observe this week from March 15-21, we must ask ourselves a difficult question: Is the “sunshine” actually reaching the people, or is it being blocked by outdated laws?
In Pennsylvania, true transparency is currently hampered by an antiquated mandate. State law requires local governments to purchase expensive classified advertisements in print newspapers to notify the public about meetings and key information. While this may have made sense decades ago, today it is a policy that serves the financial interests of a shrinking media industry more than the informational needs of our residents.
Gov. Josh Shapiro recently stated that “government should work to make people’s lives easier, not harder.” His administration is actively working to update regulations to reflect modern technology, focusing on what truly helps Pennsylvanians. Pennsylvania’s townships wholeheartedly agree. Good government is about common sense, efficiency, and respect for the taxpayers’ time and money.
The current reality is stark. According to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative, nearly 40% of local U.S. newspapers have vanished, leaving 50 million Americans in “news deserts.” Pennsylvania is not immune. Already this year, six newspapers have closed or announced they are ending operations, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Oil City Derrick. By mid-May, six “general circulation” print dailies will be gone.
Yet, despite this collapse in readership and availability, state law still requires township public notices to be printed exclusively in these disappearing publications.
This is not just a communication problem; it is a fiscal one. Research from Penn State reports that these antiquated mandates cost Pennsylvania taxpayers more than $26 million a year in legal advertising fees. In an era where local budgets are stretched thin, forcing taxpayers to fund advertisements that few people will ever see is a failure of governance.
As Bob Dylan famously sang, “the times they are a-changin’.” To maintain trust, we must modernize the law to offer flexible, cost-effective options. This does not mean eliminating print — it means adding choices. Local governments should have the freedom to post notices where residents actually look: on official township websites and in community publications.
There are currently two paths forward in Harrisburg:
House Bill 1291 effectively preserves the status quo. It pushes notices onto private newspaper websites and a statewide portal that is hard to find, difficult to navigate and nearly impossible to search. Worse, it allows for new, undefined fees that create further costs for taxpayers.
Senate Bill 194 offers commonsense modernization. It allows municipalities to publish notices on their own websites, the very place residents already go to find local information.
To be clear, this isn’t about eliminating newspapers. Local journalism remains vital to our communities. But relying solely on newspapers when there are so many other information outlets today is neither sustainable nor effective.
Public notices should be accessible, easy to find, and free of unnecessary obstacles. It is time for the General Assembly to give local governments the flexibility they need to communicate effectively in the modern world. Real transparency requires meeting people where they are, not where they used to be.
David M. Sanko is executive director of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors.
