Charles Stile

NorthJersey.com

RON IS EDITING.

When the Democratic-controlled Legislature convenes in Trenton on Monday, it could scrap a century-old law — and carry out what many suspect is a Chris Christie vendetta against New Jersey’s struggling newspaper industry.

But the rush to dismantle the law requiring local governments to publish legal notices in a newspaper also underscores a historical irony that has gone unnoticed amid the outcry in Trenton: The original law was created as a check against political bullying.

The “underlying policy” of the bill, as one expert put it, was to stop angry local officials from punishing newspapers for their tough coverage by canceling advertisements for proposed ordinances, zoning changes, bids for government contracts and other fine-print matters of town hall life.

The law was enacted in 1919, a time when Jersey City Mayor Frank “I Am The Law" Hague began his three-decade rise as New Jersey’s most notorious political boss. The provision didn’t entirely stop some thin-skinned mayors from threatening editors and publishers over the years, nor did it stop a few from carrying out the threat from time to time. But for the most part, it served its purpose.

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“It’s designed to prevent municipalities from using the legal advertising to either curry favor with a publication whose writings might be favorable to the administration that is in power, or to punish a newspaper whose views are contrary to what the administration thinks they should be,’’ Thomas J. Cafferty, the longtime attorney for the New Jersey Press Association, told lawmakers last week.

Cafferty’s testimony points to another below-the-surface irony. The same Legislature that launched the investigation into the payback-inspired George Washington Bridge lane closing — a scandal that reinforced Christie’s reputation as a political bully — is now poised to enable Christie’s payback to newspapers.

Legislative sources have told The Record that Christie is pushing the bill to “punish” New Jersey papers for their critical coverage of the scandal, which culminated last month in the federal convictions of two former top associates. Christie isn’t the only official rewarded with payback — the bill also strips away the original purpose of the 1919 law. It effectively empowers local officials to coerce papers into providing more positive coverage.

Brian Murray, a Christie spokesman, denied that Christie was out to harm newspapers.

"It had nothing to do with the press then and nothing to do with them now," Murray said, referring to attempts to change the law that failed in the past decade. "It has always had to do with saving citizens money."

Both houses have scheduled votes for a bill that would scrap the legal notice requirement, a move that newspaper industry officials warn will lead to 200-300 layoffs, force some small community papers to close, and further weaken the watchdog role of the local press.

The bill is the product of a backroom deal brokered between Christie and the Democratic-controlled Legislature that produced another bill, one that would give $10 million in pay raises to public officials in exchange for relaxing the ethics laws, which would allow Christie to profit from writing a book while in office. Sponsors say the measure ending the legal ads law is a necessary, long-overdue tweaking of an obsolete "mandate."

If passed, it will give officials the option of publishing notices on their municipal or county websites or continuing to run the notices in the newspapers. In the fuzzy, good-government-speak it’s a “permissive” bill, not a mandate that could potentially save towns thousands of dollars in savings, the bill’s supporters argue. Christie, who has been pushing hard for the bill, claims taxpayers and private businesses would save $80 million a year by posting legal notices online, yet he has refused to break down his cost analysis or provide supporting documents.

Lawmakers have accepted Christie’s unsourced numbers at face value, eager for a cost-saving rationale to justify voting for raises for public officials, part of their bargain with Christie. They have largely ignored a competing estimate from the press association, which pegs the savings at substantially less, or industry warnings that the towns may not save much of anything — and could wind up spending more — once they start shouldering the cost of publishing notices on their website.

Nor did the lawmakers show much sympathy for publishers of small, low-profit weekly newspapers, a cornerstone of civic life in New Jersey since Colonial days. Several warned that they would be forced to lay off workers or close if towns began moving their legal work to town websites.

“We didn’t get into the weekly newspaper business to make a fortune but with the hope that we could make a difference in our corner of the world,’’ said Steve Parker, publisher and general manager of the New Jersey Hills Media Group, a chain of 14 local newspapers based in Bernardsville. He called the bill an “existential threat” to his newspaper chain, with its combined circulation of 40,000 readers.

Yet supporters of the bill downplayed the doom-and-gloom scenarios.

Sen. James Whelan, D-Atlantic, a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, said towns would have the ability to compare costs. If publishing the notices on their websites proves too expensive, they can opt to continue publishing them in the paper, he said.

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In theory, that may sound prudent, but the lure of having new leverage over local newspapers may prove too hard for local officials to resist.

“It’s the worst aspect of the bill,’’ said Richard Vezza, the publisher of the Star-Ledger in Newark. “You are going to be putting a club in the hand of every official to club the newspapers.”

Vezza, who spent a long career as a reporter, editor and publisher in the rough-and-tumble terrain of Hudson County — “I got sharp elbows,’’ he told members of the Senate Local Government committee last week — recalled how government officials would call him up and threaten to give legal ads to a rival newspaper.

“'Did you see what so-and-so wrote? You better tell them to stop, or I’m pulling my legals,’ " Vezza recalled.

Some towns would flout the requirement with a “so-go-ahead-and-sue-me” swagger, Vezza said. Eventually, most would return, he said.

But a switch to a website could end up being a death warrant to small town newspapers, which are already operating with skeleton staffs and scant revenue. “A small paper will have their existence in the hands of local officials,’’ he said.

Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, D-Secaucus, a co-sponsor of the measure in the Assembly, disputed suggestions that the bill was empowering local officials with a new tool for payback, and denied that the bill was “aiding and abetting” Christie's revenge.

He argued that towns will have the option to evaluate whether they can save money and whether most of their residents are already getting their information from internet sources. Prieto argued that the bill was reflecting the realities of a new, shifting media landscape, in which newspapers are becoming increasingly obsolete.

“We have to change with the times,’’ he argued. “We used to have video stores. These (movies) are being streamed over the internet.”

The legislative proceedings also are streamed over the internet. Now, voters can watch voting sessions as they happen. But there is no streaming of the backroom, where deals are brokered — and where lawmakers beef up their power or that of their allies back in the local town halls.