THE MOOSE is loose. Well, there’s a good chance the moose could get loose, and no one will notice, if the governor and Legislature continue on their merry way of trying to restrict public access to information, all in the name of saving money.

Last week, the House Government Operations Committee considered a portion of the governor’s “Challenges for Change” measure he put on the table several weeks ago in an effort to get the Legislature to trim $38 million from the state budget. The committee focused on advertising of public notices by the state.

Under the Challenges for Change proposal, state public notices would be published online, and no longer published in newspapers, as all state and local public notices are now required under state law.

Currently, the state publishes its public notices in 16 newspapers (this newspaper does not receive state public notices). According to the secretary of state’s office, about 51 public notices are published a year. That adds up to almost $100,000.

That’s a lot of money if the person reading a public notice thinks in terms of their own income. In the context of $38 million, $100,000 is not a sneeze that will catch a lot of attention, nor will the per-person savings be enough to buy a pack of Kleenex.

The cost to taxpayers needs to be looked at in other terms than dollars and cents. Think about moose.

Last week, an article in the Gazette reported there are three major changes proposed for next fall’s moose season. According to Cedric Alexander, of Cabot, and the lead biologist and the director of the moose program since its inception, “Permits will be considerable less than the 1,255 just two years ago. There will be no split hunt, no antherless season, but archery has been added.”

Proposed permits will be 800-820, which is about one-third

less than the previous high figure.

Alexander said a public hearing will be scheduled for next

month to discuss the proposals, most likely in Montpelier.

Moose hunters, take note: were the proposal under consideration in the Legislature in effect now, you would have to go to the internet to find the public notice as to when and where the meeting to consider the moose permit reduction regulations would be held, and to read the full text of the proposed rule change. You would have to know the specific web address to find the proposal and meeting notice. If you don’t have a computer, you would have to go to your local library, which, hopefully, has public computers connected to the Internet.

Well, the web is spinning around the earth at breakneck speed so maybe the web is the way to go. That’s a popular opinion.

There are reasons other than limited access to the web, however, that need to be addressed.

A public notice is public information. Citizens have a right to know what their government is doing. Government should look for ways to use tax dollars to increase access to public information, not decrease it. A newspaper is convenient, whether read in the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, or even at Deer Camp. Some people keep computers at those locations, some don’t.

Newspapers have been used to inform the public about what a government is doing since the earliest days of the country.

When a person reads a newspaper, they move from page to page and as they do they see items they may not have expected and they gain knowledge in areas they did not seek out. A newspaper

offers serendipity for a reader and does not keep information from a reader.

Access to public information increases democracy. Decreasing access to public information to save money increases the cost of democracy. A price tag should not be put on democracy, and even moose shouldn’t be kept in the dark. R.C

Editor’s Note: The Northfield News is also not a designated paper for the publication of state notices. We attempted to become a paper of record as there are some weeklys who are. However, the Secretary of State’s Office informed us earlier this spring that the program was being phased out and no new papers were being designated for that reason..