Editorial

Editorial: Publish sheriff's sales on county website? Good luck with that

Monday, January 28, 2019

A question for longtime Banner Graphic readers: When was the last time this newspaper missed a scheduled publication date?

Was it during the Blizzard of ‘78?

No. Despite the heaviest snowfall levels in memory, the Banner was published each day, with employees sent with papers in hand on their way home to deliver to each box they could reach.

What about the downburst that wiped out power to the area in 1990?

Nope, the Banner still published, with staff members traveling to Crawfordsville to write, design and print a paper and return with it to a city that was still without power.

On Wednesday, once-in-a-generation low temperatures are forecast yet we promise that, if you so choose, you can be holding a copy of the Banner Graphic in your hands. (And once you’ve read, by all means use it to start your fireplace.)

On the other hand, when was the last time you tried to visit the Putnam County website — www.co.putnam.in.us? Don’t bother typing or copying that link. The chances are very good it won’t work.

Despite the best efforts of some in county government, the county website has been beset for years by out-of-date information or, much worse, by “Service Unavailable - HTTP Error 503.”

And yet, there are those at the Indiana Statehouse who would have you rely on the county website and not a local newspaper when matters of foreclosures and property rights are on the line.

In a vote that could be put to the entire Indiana House of Representatives this week, House Bill 1212 would eliminate the publication requirement for notice of sheriff’s sales (mortgage foreclosures).

If passed, notices of sheriff’s sales would no longer be required in the pages of local newspapers, instead moving them to websites run either by the county or the sheriff’s department.

Besides the relative unreliability of the county website, a problem that certainly doesn’t plague all Indiana counties, there’s the convenience of the information. An estimated three million Hoosiers read a newspaper each week. Do all of them open those pages to read the public notices? Of course not.

However, while looking for the latest high school basketball score or simply reading the weather report, they discover an interesting public notice advertisement, perhaps even one saying that the elderly lady next door is in danger of losing her home.

It’s hard to imagine such incidental discoveries happening on a government website devoted exclusively to public notices. A 2017 survey determined that Hoosier adults would be 60 percent less likely to read public notices if they were only posted on government websites.

Authored by Rep. Wendy McNamara (R-Evansville), the bill has already passed out of the House Committee on Financial Institutions by a vote of 7-3.

McNamara has testified that the elimination of all newspaper publication requirements for public notices is her goal. She sees no value in the printed notices, seeing them as “subsidies” for newspapers.

Far from “subsidies,” there is a value in public notices that has nothing to do with the ledger sheet.

• Public notice of foreclosures protects the elderly, disabled, uneducated and those out of the country, like members of the Armed Forces. It also helps the holder of the mortgage by enlarging the pool of bidders. Newspaper public notices alert an entire community of an event that severs the property rights of a member of that community.

• Effectively hiding the notices on websites increases the opportunity for self-dealing or collusion.

• Elimination favors the banking industry, attorneys who handle foreclosures and professional house-flippers. It reduces the number of people who might attend the sheriff’s sale because only the insiders will see the sale notices. This means bids will be lower, which means the sale will bring in fewer dollars that will be applied to the mortgage debt. The home owner not only loses his home but will still be pursued by the bank for the remaining balance.

• The bill eliminates the cost of the ad for the purchaser, while creating additional obligations and costs for the sheriff (maintaining the website, making sure notices are posted timely, creating proofs of publication, maintaining archives of three years of notices). Why should taxpayers now pay for the process, instead of the buyers who benefit from the foreclosure?

• Finally, newspaper publication creates a third party with no vested interest in the foreclosure, ensuring that notice is handled correctly. Newspaper publication is verifiable, unlike Internet posting.

Unfortunately, Rep. McNamara is right about one thing — a few papers in Indiana are charging unjustifiable rates for publication. The Hoosier State Press Association, of which the Banner Graphic is a member, has pledged to confront these outliers and rectify the situation.

Anyone with an interest in keeping public notices in the newspaper is encouraged to contact the office of Rep. Beau Baird at 1-800-382-9841.