Up for consideration by the Alabama Senate is SB387, a proposal that, if passed, would allow municipalities to publish legal notices online. Governments currently must print legal notices in newspapers before taking official action on them.

While it is true that the digital age is playing a role in making government more open to the people, the proposed bill raises several several red flags. It leaves citizens with many unanswered questions about accountability, security, accuracy, reliability, access and transparency.

It is unclear who would be responsible for making sure all notices are legally posted on a website, which website they would be posted onto, and who would fund and maintain the site. Also, who would make sure all legal notices are accurate? If someone acts upon erroneous information, who is held responsible?

While it is known that websites can be hacked or duplicated, this is not an issue in newspapers.

Another important factor is that of access. The U.S. Census Bureau indicated in 2010 data that two million Alabamians live in households without Internet acess. Therefore, not only would citizens no longer be able to simply open their newspapers to find out what their government is up to; and not only would they have to visit different municipalities websites rather than looking at one newspape — but two million Alabamians would not have the resources to peruse those sites.

It is true that newspapers make mistakes. However, newspapers are highly regarded — and rightfully so — as being fair and unbiased. The Internet, on the other hand, is regarded as reactionary. Teachers do not want students to do the bulk of research online because it is often biased, commonly copied from other peoples’ work, and at times, untrustworthy.

We do not object to legal notices being posted both online and in newspapers. But they shouldn’t be removed from newspapers entirely. The bottom line is, ditch the idea of replacing newspaper access with Internet access for legal notices.