Newspaper Legal-Ad Snafus Halting Road Projects in Alabama

By: Mark Fitzgerald According to Alabama transportation officials, road projects around the state are not being delayed by tree-hugging environmentalists or NIMBY (not in my backyard) activists -- they're being delayed by newspaper classified-ad clerks who foul up the placement orders for legal notices.

The latest example happened in October, when the state Department of Transportation had to repeat the bidding for a new bridge on state Route 99, near Athens in northern Alabama, because The News-Courier there ran the legal notice for the bids on three consecutive days rather than the statutorily required once a week for three consecutive weeks.

Construction on the project will be delayed by at least three months, DOT officials said.

For Transportation Director Joe McInnes, the Athens delay was the final straw. Just in the past year, he said, five important projects have been delayed by similar screw-ups in placing legal notices, he said in comments reported in The Decatur (Ala.) Daily by staff writer M.J. Ellington.

"When a newspaper fails to publish these notices in the manner we request and pay for, we are prevented by state law from accepting any of the bids," McInnes said.

The errors cost the state, DOT transportation officials say. The Decatur Daily reported that another legal-notice error in a highway widening project in eastern Alabama -- an unnamed newspaper ran the ad for two consecutive weeks but not the third -- forced the state to repeat the bidding process. When the new bids came in, the final price was $195,175 higher, the newspaper reported.

All told, the delays in the past year have cost the state more than $202,000 -- so McInnes wants to change the law on legal notices, not to eliminate the requirement but to prevent delays caused by mistakes in publishing the ads.

The Alabama Press Association has been talking with state officials about a way to overcome the problems, Executive Director Felicia Mason said in a telephone interview with E&P Tuesday.

"They're not trying to be unreasonable about it," Mason said of the state's position. DOT officials are not trying to eliminate the three-week publication requirement, she said: "They understand that's part of the public's right to know. ... We certainly are going to work with them [to find] a way that doesn't penalize the taxpayers from the Department of Transportation's point of view, and that doesn't penalize the public's right to know."

Alabama's legislature starts its next session Feb. 1, and the press association is confident something can be worked out by then, she said: "Nobody's trying to be unreasonable about it. Humans make mistakes, and we've got to account for that."