Politicians like to say they support a free press. We’ll find out Tuesday night (April 28) if anybody on the Menlo Park City Council actually believes in the First Amendment.
Council will vote on a list of new and increased fees, and slipped into the 245-page document is a requirement that newspapers pay $373 for each rack. For a paper with 25 racks, that would be a $9,325 hit.
Renewing a permit would cost $233 per year for each rack.
If a newspaper wanted to dispute these fees, the city would charge it $373.
Put another way, Menlo Park wants to start charging people to exercise their constitutional rights. How long before the city slaps a tax on people who want to exercise their right to free speech, or to peaceably assemble?
The council is looking to impose this news rack fee, along with hundreds of other new fees or increases, because the state has reduced how much car tax money the city gets.
If the city needs to save some money, it could eliminate its “public engagement manager,” Kendra Calvert, who made $156,923 in 2024, according to the government salary tracking website Transparent California. With benefits, her compensation was $250,325.
That’s a lot of money for a PR person.
Cutting her job would result in a savings much greater than the revenue the city would get from news rack fees.
But city governments rarely look at saving money — they focus on raising taxes and fees.
The city calls this a “fee for service,” but the city won’t be providing any service to newspapers. The newspapers purchase and maintain the news racks. The newspaper is available to readers at no charge. Yet the city wants to charge us for providing a free product. Can you tax something that’s free?
If approved tonight, Menlo Park would become the first Mid-Peninsula city to charge such a fee.
Local newspapers are typically small businesses. These fees are prohibitive. They’ll make a paper consider the idea of dropping distribution and news coverage in Menlo Park. After all, newspapers usually don’t have to pay a fee to exercise their First Amendment rights. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
If council members really support a free press, they should drop these fees.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.
Let’s see, by my count there’s only three free papers in those racks in Menlo Park. You can only wonder if they’re going to charge as well for the real estate rags that occupy some of those spaces. Right as always, Dave!
This is a freedom of the press battle. These fees constitute a “prior restraint” on free expression, as the right to publish is meaningless without the right to distribute. Under Supreme Court precedent, while cities can regulate the placement of boxes, they cannot use fees or licensing to act as censors or control which publications can be sold on public streets. The case is City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750 (1988).
No city should balance its budget by increasing fees paid by news media.
Amendments only work if you are willing to fight back. Our elected California representatives passed a 11% additional tax on firearms and ammunition. They now get all the extra money to support after school programs that are designed to keep the little poor minorities out of trouble. Maybe the “paper box tax” will be used to fight graffiti and other forms of illicit expression.
Of course it makes sense for cities to control where newsstands are placed for pedestrian safety and open sight lines for traffic corners, but it is unacceptable to tax our free presses. We are so lucky to have these news sources available. I hope RGW’s court case made an impression of the Menlo Park City Council.
Freedom of the press has nothing to do with free distribution. If the PA Daily Post was truly free I wouldn’t have to stare at the mass of ads that take up half the space online and in print. No, you’re taking up permanent space in the public space, and should pay something for it. I can’t just go set up a kiosk downtown.
Ben, you can set up a kisok downtown too. Nothing is stopping you from starting your own paper. Buy a metal box, paint your paper’s name on it and then put your paper in there.
What grade did Ben drop out of school?
The U.S. Supreme Court has indicated in multiple rulings, most notably Lovell v. City of Griffin (1938), that the distribution of a newspaper is essential to a free press. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes stated that “liberty of circulating is as essential to that freedom as liberty of publishing.” In other words, what good is a free press if you are unable to distribute what you’ve printed?
Where did Ben go?