Commissioners Thomas McKay, left, Kenny Dement, Larry Jarboe, Tom Mattingly and Dan Raley

The Bay Net photo by Sean Rice

St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners President Thomas McKay (R-Hollywood) publicly lambasted a local tabloid publication for repeated mistakes made in publishing the county’s legal advertisements.

The St. Mary’s Today, a paper with a reputation for assailing McKay’s character in each weekly issue, received the contract to publish the county’s legal advertisements in September by issuing the lowest bid.

“Commissioners you’ve been made aware of how three mistakes have been made in advertising public notices since we changed who’s doing the public notices,” McKay announced during the board’s weekly meeting today.

The legal ads were being published by the local bi-weekly newspaper The Enterprise prior to the switch. The contract value is in the neighborhood of $190,000 annually.

“The St. Mary’s Today has made three mistakes that really has not only cost the citizens of St. Mary’s County money, because every time they make a mistake we have to notify directly those people around that property that it’s been canceled, we have to then notify them again directly that we’ve rescheduled that hearing.

“And we have staff time to do that, we also have the applicant that’s been inconvenienced by that,” McKay continued.

“It’s very disturbing quite frankly to me, and I think it should be disturbing to the rest of the county board of commissioners that mistakes are being made,” McKay continued. “In one case, one citizen has had to have their public hearing rescheduled two times now. It’s very unfortunate so I hope that will be corrected and resolved soon.”

None of McKay’s fellow board members commented any further on board president’s concerns.

In an interview later in the day with The Bay Net, McKay said the issue should be resolved by either re-bidding the contract or nullifying the contract and reissuing it to The Enterprise.

“That would be the best way to correct it in my opinion,” McKay said. “Our procurement office told us publishing with The Enterprise gives the citizens of St. Mary’s County the best value.

McKay said The Enterprise has an “audited” circulation of 16,000 copies, and the St. Mary’s Today has an “unaudited” circulation of 4,000. He said state law requires the decision be base on audited numbers. “We need to be sure they have the numbers they say they have.”

“And apparently we’re not getting as much assess to the citizens,” he said, based on a marked drop in citizen attendance at public hearings. “We had two public hearings today and not a single person signed in.”

The board of commissioners never voted on which publication would be awarded the cont