First off, I want to congratulate the Fountain Hills High School girls soccer team for capturing the Division III State Championship.

It is the first state championship in girls soccer for Fountain Hills since the school opened.

They defeated Chandler Seaton Catholic 2-0.

The team pulled together after losing senior sweeper Jess Stricker, one of the team’s captains, was knocked out of the game with a concussion while going up for a ball on a free kick.

Their overall record for the season was 20-3-1.

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The next topic I want to address is HB2554, a piece of legislation introduced by Fountain Hills’ own Rep. John Kavanagh.

The bill was passed by the House Technology & Infrastructure Committee by a 5-1 vote last Thursday, was expected to be reviewed by the House Rules Committee at the beginning of this week and could be fast tracked to a full House vote this week.

Basically, the bill eliminates publication requirements applicable for corporate and LLC filings with the Arizona Corporation Commission including the formation, dissolution or any other changes in corporate status.

In his guest editorial in this week’s Times, Rep. Kavanagh states that the posting of printed notices in newspapers of new business startups creates “needless work and publication expenses.”

He said the only ones that benefit are the newspapers who “rake in advertising revenue.”

The Times does print these Public Notices because we qualify as a general circulation newspaper. We attempt to make the process as easy for a person placing the public notice as we can. For this service, we charge $48.74 for the three-time publication of an LLC filing and $114.43 for a corporation filing. The longer tax-exempt corporation filing charge is $141.08. These figures include sales tax.

I don’t think those prices should be a hardship for any startup business. If it is, then that business has bigger financial problems ahead.

We took in approximately $48,000 in revenue from public notice advertising last year. That also means the Town of Fountain Hills collected some $1200 in sales tax from those sales.

That’s not a great amount in the overall scheme of things but that will be lost revenue to the town.

In addition to being printed in the paper, the public notices are also posted on The Times website and are permanently posted on the Arizona Newspapers Association website publicnoticeads.com, which is free, searchable and funded by Arizona newspapers through the association.

That would mean there are three chances of someone seeing the public notice versus the single place that is being proposed for the state website.

Newspapers, including ours, also provide affidavits as legal proof of notice. The public often relies on these affidavits and archived records to prove that notice was provided. Government cannot replicate this critical function as the web still does not have a tool in place to verify the authenticity of an original post – a problem that could create a legal nightmare.

The Commission hasn’t fixed its old website yet.This new government website will be funded through a new government appropriation and additional filing fees.

A couple of years ago, $250,000 was appropriated to modernize the current ACC website, Starpas. Twice, the Commission delayed launching the new website, and over this past summer, the Commission advised that its IT director was retiring and that it would be issuing a formal Request for Information (RFI) in order to figure out how the system could be fixed and ready to go.

If the Commission couldn’t do it with $250,000, how can this bill be implemented with only $65,000?

John, the system of using public notice is working well. There is no outcry from the business community to fix anything.

What it would accomplish is create another hardship on a local business – your hometown newspaper.

Please withdraw the bill.