Take Notice:

Since we took over the Times in late 2009, we've made a number of changes to your newspaper. We hope you enjoy the new look, content and services we provide. Soon, our offerings will include reproduction services and retail office supplies in our renovated historic office on Main Street in Waitsburg.

As a newspaper team, we truly enjoy putting together the Times every week because we get lots of encouragement from you, our readers.

This is one of the reasons why it saddens us to bring you some bad news with regards to the long-term future of the Times, now in its 134th year as a weekly publication.

We are under direct threat from the sponsors of a new state bill, which would take away one of our main sources of revenue as a small business.

If this bill passes, the Times will likely cease to exist, and it would leave you high and dry when it comes to knowing what your government agencies are up to.

Draft legislation was introduced in both houses on Jan. 21 that will give all cities and counties in the state the option of placing their government notices on their websites instead of publishing them in their designated legal newspapers.

If passed, state agencies, fire districts, school districts, ports, PUDs, health districts and other public entities in the state will demand the same. Foreclosure notices and summons by publication will soon follow.

The Times is the newspaper of record for Walla Walla County. It publishes all these kinds of notices for our community and has had that role for a long, long time. We earn a significant percentage of our income from preparing, proofing, publishing and providing notarized affidavits for legal notices.

Without them, The Times and many other weekly newspapers in the state that are already working overtime to survive these tough times, when private-sector advertising budgets are in the tank, would have no other choice but to close their doors, lay off their staff and fold some of this state's oldest publications.

You would no longer have access to the news and services we now provide.

Giving cities and counties the Internet upload option won't serve you as citizens either. Many elderly local residents do not use computers, let alone navigate the Internet to access government websites. The Times itself illustrates how much area residents still rely on their newspaper for its content, including legal notices.

We took the Times online last year and offer access to the news on our website for a token $10 extra per year with a print subscription, but we only have 27 of our 1,300 paid subscribers who use the service.

In a statewide readership survey conducted for the Washington Newspaper Association in 2009, 86 percent of respondents agreed that agencies should be required to publish legal notices in their newspapers, while 53 percent said that they or members of their households regularly read public notices in their newspapers.

The draft law ignores the important role legal newspapers play in verifying and providing proof that agencies have met state law publication requirements and did so accurately.

We understand local governments' need and desire to cut costs, but this latest idea won't make any meaningful dent in their budgets, and you will suffer from a lack of accountability, a lack of access to timely government information and the lack of a newspaper that meets your need to know what's going on in your community.

Help us stop this nonsense. Please call or write your elected officials to tell them this is the worst idea Olympia has come up with yet. Demand that your newspaper and your government's accountability survive.

Senator Mike Hewitt: 360-786-7630; Representative Maureen Walsh: 360-786-7836; and Representative Terry Nealey: 360-786-7828. All three have already expressed their opposition to the legal notices provision in the bill, but it doesn't hurt to let them know how you feel anyway.

Without your voice, a proud Waitsburg publishing tradition is at risk.