State legal notices of meetings affecting everyone from hunters and anglers to business owners could run online instead of in the newspaper, under a proposal passed by the Legislature’s budget committee Tuesday.

Peter Fox, executive director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, called the decision to switch to Internet notices hasty and uninformed and said his group would seek to overturn it. The change still needs to be approved by the full Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle.

"Instead of government having the responsibility to push information out to the public, it now becomes the responsibility of the average citizen to take time out of their busy day and go to government," Fox said. "It just isn’t right."

The joint finance committee approved the motion by Rep. Gary Sherman, D-Port Wing, on a 12-4 party-line vote.

Joe Hoey, an aide to Sherman, said the lawmaker didn’t know how much money the move would save. But he said the move made sense since agencies could post meeting notices on their Web sites for free instead of paying to do so in the State Journal, the official state newspaper.

"This is one area where we thought we could save money without reducing access to the information," Hoey said.

State Journal advertising director Todd Sears estimated the revenue from state legal notices placed in the paper at about $150,000 a year.

Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills and other Republicans on the budget committee opposed the move, saying not everyone has access to the Internet. Opponents also said the proposal should be handled as a separate bill to allow for more public input.

Fox echoed the concern about access, pointing to a May 2008 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that said only about 13 percent of Americans visited a government Web site the previous day. The majority of those were under 50.

Fox said he was concerned the move could also lead lawmakers to relax state requirements on local governments to print meeting notices, minutes and other information in their local newspapers.

University of Wisconsin System spokesman David Giroux said the System wouldn’t necessarily stop paying for notices about the Board of Regents meetings in the newspaper, saying universities wanted to be more transparent to the public, not less.