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Dayton papers vie for position again

Leader, Review each want county designation

After last year’s controversy, the Webster County Board of Supervisors is considering carefully its choice of three newspapers of record for the county.

Rival papers from the same town, the Dayton Review and the Dayton Leader, again both applied to officially publish the meeting minutes and official county proceedings.

Four papers presented their certified list of bonafide, yearly subscribers within the county at Tuesday’s regular meeting. The supervisors will now check over the lists before making their decision next week.

By law, three papers are required for a county the size of Webster. When more than three papers compete for this role, the county must choose based on whoever has the largest number of qualified subscribers. They are defined as those who live within the county and have been paid subscribers for at least six months.

Last year the Leader was chosen as a paper of record, although the Review reported 35 more yearly subscribers than the Leader, 271 to 236. The supervisors said the Review had been disqualified after improper names were submitted.

In November 2016, that decision was overturned by a district court judge after an appeal by Glenn Schreiber, owner of the Gowrie News and Dayton Review.

On Tuesday, the Review reported 364 qualified subscribers, and the Leader reported 200.

The Gowrie News reported 322 subscribers, and The Messenger — the only daily paper in the contest — reported 4,965.

However, the supervisors questioned Schreiber on whether his list was accurate after Schreiber asked for more time to reconcile his list of subscribers with signed assent forms.

The only subscribers that may be counted are those who have bought a subscription to the paper, or those receiving gift subscriptions bought by somebody else, who have signed an assent form.

The supervisors denied Schreiber’s request for a two-day extension.

“I do not believe the board can grant that, because the deadline was today,” First Assistant County Attorney Ryan Baldridge said. “Unfortunately, we have to take the list and the information as it is now.”

After an unexpected health crisis, Schreiber said he’d been unable to finish reconciling the list of assent forms.

“I think we’re in pretty good shape,” Schreiber said. “I know we’re in good shape on the Gowrie News, but the Dayton Review, we do have quite a few assent forms we would like to reconcile.”

Schreiber said the list was accurate when he last went through the list in the summer. He said he didn’t think it could be off by any more than 25 or 30.

“It could be off at the most by 50. That’s the worst case scenario, but it’s probably less,” Schreiber said.

The supervisors and Baldridge will look over the lists before making their decision next week.

According to the court’s ruling in November 2016, the supervisors disqualified the Review, and named the Leader paper of record because the Review’s list included seven gift subscribers who were not bonafide yearly subscribers.

But the mere presence of mistakes doesn’t constitute fraud, wrote Chief District Court Judge Kurt Wilke, and Iowa code only directs the supervisors to throw out a list if the list is fraudulent.

Also, the Dayton Leader did not file a “verified” statement of its number of subscribers in 2016, Wilke wrote, and thus was ineligible.

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