During every Texas Legislative Session lobbyists convince friendly lawmakers to try to help them escape public notice requirements that are designed to protect the people.
Those requirements exist for a reason. Some require government bodies to inform the public of what they are doing and how they are spending taxpayers’ dollars. The intent of such efforts seems apparent, as specific bills have sought to eliminate public notices regarding proposed tax increases, requests for contract bids, zoning changes and discharges or pollutants and hazardous materials.
Other public disclosure laws affect private enterprises with the intent of preventing abuse of consumers and outright thievery.
One such requirement that has been attacked in recent years is the requirement that operators of rental storage facilities issue public notices before seizing the possessions in a storage unit for which payments have become delinquent. That effort, which fortunately has failed in previous legislatures, is back on lawmakers’ desks.
House Bill 2574 by Rep. Stan Lambert, R-Abilene, would eliminate the requirement that public notice of such seized property sales be printed in local newspapers. The bill would give the sellers the option of using any “commercially reasonable manner,” which includes simple posting on their website.
According to the Public Notice Resource Center, the publication requirement itself was a concession that enabled storage unit owners to avoid having to go through the court system to make diligent, reasonable efforts to locate the renters before seizing their possessions. Further weakening notification requirements doesn’t seem reasonable at all, but rather an effort to stack the deck in favor of those who might see an opportunity to profit by seizing and selling other people’s property.
Auctions of the contents of abandoned storage units have become popular reality television fare, and created a lucrative revenue source for those businesses. Many owners of such businesses surely are honest, but removing the public notice requirement would enable the shady ones to hide such notice without violating the law, and auction off property before the original owners or their families know about it.
That can occur when the person who rented the unit is absent, whether through death, illness, military service or other situation, and family members might not know about the unit.
Seeing a notice in their daily newspaper, whether it’s a printed or online edition, could alert such parties before it’s too late.
Those people, however, ordinarily would have no reason to monitor the kinds of alternative sites this legislation would allow. Such publication would be tantamount to posting a traffic warning sign behind a tree and then blaming anyone who crashes because they didn’t see it.
Rio Grande Valley lawmakers, and all their fellow legislators, should recognize the need to maintain public disclosure of actions and decisions that affect their lives, including protections from the loss of property because they weren’t adequately informed of their potential seizure. We trust they will continue to protect the public from such unnecessary losses.
