How local government keeps local newspapers in business

A long time ago, AJ Wagner (RIP) was the County Auditor, before he became a judge. He looked at how much he was spending publishing the legal notices in the Dayton Daily news and thought, there has to be a better way. The Dayton Voice/Impact Weekly, Dayton City Paper was a free weekly that was widely distributed and he decided to put his tax dollars to work in support of an independent small business.

The proverbial shit his the fan quickly.

This is not a story about that, it’s about how the City of Dayton purchasing department is wasting your money publishing a whole bunch of worthless boilerplate that no one cares about. Frederick Stoval, head of Public Works must be getting kickbacks for his insanely long “Bid Notices.”

As someone who bids on government RFPs (and never wins locally), the inclusion of much more than what the RFP is for, the due date, and a link to the website is all that’s really necessary. Especially when you are paying by the column inch.

On January 6, 2025, Stoval published 3 notices, taking up over 2 complete columns, with a ton of repetitive and unnecessary clauses.

This is thousands of dollars that could go to hiring more people to plow the roads or sweep our streets, spent on publishing bids in a newspaper that very few people are reading. And, when it comes to these bids- there are websites set up to publish these to the correct audience. 99.9% of the readership of the DDn don’t read these.

In fact, the City has their bid postings on their website: https://www.daytonohio.gov/Bids.aspx or here: https://qcpi.questcdn.com/cdn/posting/?projType=all&provider=5510576&group=2991

Where you can find the exact same 3 bids:

• Wesleyan Bike path: https://qcpi.questcdn.com/cdn/posting/?projType=all&provider=5510576&group=2991
• Midtown Water Main Improvements: https://qcpi.questcdn.com/cdn/posting/?group=2991&provider=5510576&projType=all
• Third Street and Mainstreet Streetscape https://qcpi.questcdn.com/cdn/posting/?group=2991&provider=5510576&projType=all

Now, you can’t just blame the city- this is state law: Notice of Competitive Bidding. ORC 307.87

But how much is required to be in the published posting isn’t what the City is paying for. The only people who will care if these bid notices are abbreviated is the DDn- because it’s their last cash cow left, besides obituaries and sheriff’s sales.

The real conundrum is if the city, the clerks of courts, the sheriff, and the treasurer, who all waste tax dollars because ORC requires them to publish in a “newspaper” ala pre-internet days, stopped paying for this ink on paper (bid notices no longer show in Saturdays paper which is only virtual now) would there still be a DDn? And do we still need a newspaper?

I’d almost rather see a non-profit news organization, paid for with a sliver of our sales tax collections, than continue this lame newspaper on life support of required legal notices.

There is no question that putting these long RFP notices is an example of government waste, of the kind Elon Musk and his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) patrol is planning on tackling. But, as always there are unintended consequences. The question is, do we NEED a newspaper more than we need efficient government?

The founding fathers counted on the “Fourth Estate” as a checks and balance on government, and like it or not, what’s left of the DDn is still our last chance to expose corruption and waste. While I love those of you who subscribe and support my efforts, it’s hardly enough to do this full time and really dig into all the stories I want to chase.

Here are some real ways we could create government efficiency in Dayton (the region- not just the city). All of them are in place in other states:

• Eliminate all the small police forces, and bring them all together under the elected County Sheriff. As part of this, any “private police forces” as maintained by the universities, hospitals, parks system, would all subcontract real police officers from the sheriff’s office.
• Eliminate all the minor local courts and their websites, making one Countywide courts system, with one website, and one court system. This way, we might even be able to start a night court, so minor misdemeanor crimes don’t require missing work to appear.
• A single building department, issuing permits county wide, with county wide enforcement, and inspection.
• Unify all street maintenance countywide, same for trash and recycling and water departments.
• Expand Metroparks to be a complete unified parks and recreation department county wide, with direct oversight of the County Commission.
• One library system countywide. One school superintendent/district/board.

Of course, some of our banana republics would say absolutely not, especially on the unified schools. But, the number of meetings, boards, councils, and things for a newspaper to investigate and report on would be dramatically lower and easier to do.

Along those same lines, we should also consider creating a new elected office, the people’s counsel, to pursue violations of public meetings laws, and to prosecute wrong doing by public agencies. Somehow, we need better checks and balances.

And, we need a watch dog, whose not named David Esrati. He’s a real loser.

Thanks for reading.

Song: The Newspaper Blues by David Esrati