BY JEFF CHUDZINSKINorth Country This Week

CANTON -- North Country This Week has been designated an official newspaper by the St. Lawrence County Legislature for the purpose of publishing local law notices and other matters required by law to be published.  

County legislators approved the resolution during the Jan. 2 meeting.

Under New York State law, the county is required to designate at least two newspapers for publishing such notices, officials say.

Legislators also designated Johnson Newspapers and the Gouverneur Tribune Press as official newspapers.

Under state law, the designation is to take into consideration two major political parties.

This is the third year in a row NCTW has been designated an official newspaper, after legislators moved to a model to designate all three papers for both political parties.

Under the old model, the Republicans simply rotated between all of the papers in the county on an annual basis, while the Democrats always kept the Watertown Daily Times.

In 2022, legislators scrapped the rotation model.

The issue was tabled multiple times but moved forward Feb. 7, 2022 when now Chairman David Forsythe first proposed a resolution to designate three official newspapers, two for Republicans and one for Democrats.

With the amendment, North Country This Week and the Gouverneur Tribune were originally to be designated the Republican papers, while the Johnson Newspapers Company, which publishes the Watertown Daily Times, Courier Observer and Ogdensburg Journal, keeps the Democratic designation.

After the amendment was proposed, Legislator Nicole Terminelli asked if both parties could just designate all three papers as official newspapers to depoliticize the process, to which County Attorney Steve Button said they could.

Legislator Jim Reagen, who is a former managing editor of the Ogdensburg Journal, said at the time he was pleased with the outcome as he had been pushing for a change that better served the public interest for months.

“Our interest as county legislators ought to be getting our advertising in front of as many sets of eyes as we can,” he said in 2022.

Reagen said the new designation ensured near total coverage of the county and helps the county achieve its goal of transparency.

“By supporting Mr. Forsythe’s resolution we’ll be doing a service to everyone in the county,” he  previously said.