Newspaper Notice As Governmental Transparency Mechanism: Evidence From Florida

This paper studies the role of newspaper notices on citizen engagement. We examine a recent Florida legislation that revokes the requirement that public notices appear in newspapers and allows local governments to publish notices on their county’s website instead. We find that local governments located in counties with a public notice website significantly reduce newspaper notice after the legislation, particularly for topics that tend to encourage citizen engagement, such as public hearings, planning and zoning proposals, or upcoming elections. By contrast, we find no discernible changes in website traffic of counties’ public notice websites. Consistent with a decrease in citizen awareness of public notices in affected cities, we find a decline in public meeting attendance after the legislation. We also find an increase in the number of commercial zoning permits, consistent with reduced citizen activism against new construction. Overall, our results suggest that the removal of newspaper notices removes information about local government activities and reduces citizen engagement.