Valley Herald Awarded Legal Notices Contract

Don’t look in The Spokesman-Review for formal notices about Spokane County meetings, land-use decisions and calls for bids.

County commissioners on Tuesday awarded the contract for legal notices to the Valley Herald, a weekly newspaper with 2,500 subscribers, including seven each in Deer Park and Cheney.

The Spokesman-Review has a daily circulation of about 86,000 in Spokane County.

The Herald and The Spokesman-Review were the only papers that submitted bids for the contract, worth $99,000 last year. The Herald underbid the daily newspaper by about 32 percent.

By law, commissioners must consider both cost and circulation when awarding the bid.

“If I wanted to keep the public from knowing what’s going on, then I would publish it in the Valley Herald,” said Commissioner Skip Chilberg, who angrily opposed the change.

Chilberg argued that the county will have to buy supplemental advertising in other newspapers when it considers land-use issues outside the Valley. State law requires that such issues be advertised in papers that circulate in the affected neighborhoods.

Commissioners Steve Hasson and Phil Harris said the Herald’s circulation is broad enough to fit the county’s needs.

“I do not believe that if we put it in the Valley Herald we’re denying the average person the right to see those ads,” said Harris. “They can still get it if they want it.”

Hasson said the change was a good way “to spread the wealth around.”

“If The Spokesman-Review’s the only game in town, then what’s to keep them competitive?” he said. “It’s a goal of mine to assure that the business of the county is done as costeffectively as possible.”

The Herald was the county’s paper of record from 1977 until 1989, when it was under different ownership and had a circulation of 17,000. The Spokane Chronicle won the bid that year. The Spokesman-Review took over when the Chronicle ceased publication in 1992.

Apparent conflicts of interest that might have derailed other decisions were set aside Tuesday.

Hasson’s wife works for The Spokesman-Review. He is a close friend of Herald owner Clark Hager, who helped orchestrate Hasson’s switch to the Republican party.

Harris, through his work with Boy Scouts, said he has forged a friendship with the Cowles family, which owns The Spokesman-Review. Like Hasson, he has enjoyed campaign support from the Herald.

Chilberg regularly is blasted in Herald editorials, political cartoons and stories.

“I just don’t like the Valley Herald,” Chilberg said Tuesday morning during a briefing about the contract. “It isn’t a real newspaper.”

Hager said he didn’t think politics had anything to do with the decision, “although I’m sure we wouldn’t have gotten it” if Republican Harris hadn’t replaced Democrat Pat Mummey.

Spokesman-Review Publisher Stacey Cowles said the company was “very sorry to lose the business. The county’s a very important customer to us.

“I think we’re best equipped to inform the greatest number of county residents at the most competitive rate,” Cowles said.