An election year? A surge in passion for government transparency? A growing admiration among state legislators for their local newspapers? Whatever the reason, the state of public notice in the U.S. remains unseasonably calm for this time of the year.

Lots of public notice-related legislation has been introduced — PNRC is tracking more than 200 bills — but so far most of it hasn’t gone anywhere. There have been pockets of activity over the last month, however. Here are the highlights.

Missouri
Missouri is the only state that appears to be in some present danger, following three separate committee hearings last month on bills to curtail newspaper notice. Two of those hearings focused on HB 1651 and SB 877, companion bills that would move foreclosure notice in the state to the websites of law firms serving as mortgage trustees. Both bills were voted out of committee but publishers in the state remain guardedly optimistic that neither will make it to the floor before the legislature recesses in mid-May.

Like the foreclosure bills, the other public notice measure to get a hearing in Missouri is a repeat from last year. Sen. Doug Libla’s (R-Poplar Bluff) SB 580, which would move all government notice to a website maintained by the Secretary of State, is similar to legislation Sen. Libla introduced in 2017. Despite having a year to build support for the measure, however, the senator was the only individual to testify in its favor at a committee hearing last week. The bill remains in committee.

Utah
Sometimes unique legislation is the result of thoughtful, creative policymaking. Other times, however, a one-of-a-kind bill is simply the product of its author’s confusion. Utah HB 301 qualifies as an example of the latter. It would allow “a person required by law to publish legal notice” to satisfy that requirement by serving notice “by certified mail or in person, directly on all parties for whom the statute establishing the legal notice requirement requires legal notice.” (It would also change how public notice advertising rates are determined, via methodology that is too bizarre to explain here.) Although the bill’s sponsor appears to have conflated the concepts of public notice and personal service, it sailed through the House before a Senate committee voted unanimously last week to hold it. Now it doesn’t stand much chance of passing before the legislative session ends at midnight on Friday.

To be fair, the sponsor’s confusion may have been the result of Utah’s uniquely bad public notice laws. In 2007, the legislature passed a bill creating what remains today the only official state-owned public notice website in the U.S. That measure also moved all government notice unrelated to property interests from newspapers to the state website. Perhaps the carve-out for property notices confused the sponsor. In any case, most kinds of notices that newspapers continue to run in every other state — for meetings, budgets, audits, etc. — are now published in Utah exclusively on the official state website.

Kentucky
Utah doesn’t have a monopoly on strange public notice legislation. Kentucky HB 478, introduced late last month, is a case in point. It amends the state’s general notice statute to allow public bodies and government agencies to post notices on their own websites in lieu of newspapers. That part isn’t unusual. But the bill also reaches deep into the Kentucky code to forbid the use of newspaper notice to publicize dozens of specific government processes, like public hearings, budget proposals, and school district report cards. It’s almost as if the primary sponsor, Rep. Jim DeCesare (R-Bowling Green), didn’t trust the coffin he built for government transparency in the bill’s main provision and felt the need to add some nails to keep it shut. DeCesare recently announced he wouldn’t seek reelection after it was reported he was one of several Kentucky legislators who settled sexual harassment claims. Fortunately, that doesn’t bode well for the bill’s prognosis.

The Kentucky Press Association also learned last week that it needs to rally the troops once again to fight the legislature’s annual effort to curtail newspaper notice by way of the state budget. This year’s budget bill contains sections allowing school districts and cities to publish some notices on their websites instead of newspapers. School districts would be able to move financial statements and student report cards to their websites, and cities could do the same with audit reports and bid solicitations. The schools provision is identical to language that was included in the state budget from 2002 until 2016, when it was vetoed by Governor Matt Bevin. KPA feels good about its chances with the bill in the Senate.

Idaho
A more run-of-the-mill bad public notice bill went down to defeat last week after a committee hearing in Idaho. HB 420 would have allowed government units to post on their websites all notices now required by law to be published in newspapers. The bill, which didn’t bother much with details, would have also required state and local agencies to maintain a “public notice” tab on their website home page and to “keep a historical record of the posting” for each electronic notice. The Post Register of Idaho Falls reports that the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ron Nate (R-Rexburg), ended his testimony with a joke about the bill number that he attributed to his daughters: “This is House Bill 420. It’s 420 yo, blaze it.” The committee obliged, smoking it by a vote of 10-5.

Wisconsin
A bill that would make free-circulation newspapers eligible to publish public notices in municipalities that do not have a paid-distribution newspaper was approved last month by the Wisconsin Assembly. AB 731 also makes technical updates to the eligibility law by adding a minimum news content requirement and providing for the continuity of legal status for publications in the case of sales and mergers. Supported by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, the bill passed on a voice vote without discussion. Its companion in the Senate has been approved at the committee level and is ready to be scheduled for a vote. Several other minor bills in the state that would add or eliminate newspaper notice in limited circumstances also advanced.

Mississippi
Several public-notice related bills died last month in Mississippi. Three that would have added additional newspaper notice requirements in relatively rare circumstances failed to meet legislative deadlines. The fourth, as originally drafted, would have allowed government units in the state to publish all of their notices on a “free, publicly accessible, official government website.” But it “was gutted on the floor of the House and completely re-written” to eliminate any impact on public notice, according to the Mississippi Press Association.

Arizona
A bill that would have eliminated the periodical permit requirement to qualify as an official newspaper in the state was defeated by a 5-1 vote following a committee hearing early last month. It was opposed by the Arizona Newspapers Association. Another bill that would have allowed property tax assessment notices to be published on county websites also died in committee. That legislation would also have required notices that run in newspapers to be posted on the ANA statewide public notice site.