The newspaper industry that existed when public notice laws were originally enacted is a thing of the past. There are fewer newspapers and they have less circulation. The papers are physically smaller and sometimes they’re designed, edited and/or printed at great geographical distances from the local markets in which they circulate. They’re also published electronically with a reach and immediacy that were unprecedented in the pre-internet era.
These changes have made it increasingly difficult for newspapers and government agencies to discharge their responsibilities under public notice laws enacted many decades ago. As a result, state press associations otherwise reluctant to meddle with public notice statutes now may find it necessary to advocate for changes to ensure the laws that determine which papers qualify to publish notices remain relevant.
Minnesota House File 3682, which was signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Tim Walz (D) and took effect August 1, provides a model for press groups considering changes that would expand eligibility requirements for official newspapers in their state.
According to Minnesota Newspaper Association Executive Director Lisa Hills, two developments convinced MNA it was time to modernize its public notice statute. First, an association representing local government asked MNA for its help in meeting their members’ publishing requirements. The group emphasized it had no interest in engineering a wholesale shift of notices to government websites. Second, one of the state’s counties experienced a temporary absence of any newspapers qualified to publish notices.
After drafting a list of possible revisions to the statute, MNA scheduled a series of public notice webinars in 2021 seeking feedback from members on potential legislative solutions. “We got great participation from our members so they fully understood what we were hoping to achieve with our bill,” says Hills. MNA also sought input from associations representing local government groups.
As we have previously reported, HF-3682 required newspapers to publish their notices on MNA’s statewide public notice website and to include an index link to the public notice section on their own website.
It also simplified the law and matched statutory requirements more closely to modern realities of the newspaper business. For instance, HF-3682 authorized e-editions to help meet print publication frequency standards. It also eliminated circulation minimums included in the previous version of the statute, replacing them with the requirement that “a nominal percentage” of a paper’s total print circulation must be distributed in “the area to which a public notice is directed, or where there is a reasonable likelihood that the person to whom it is directed will become aware of the notice.”
The bill also reduced the minimum “printed space” required for all official papers in the state, from 1,000 square inches to 800 square inches, and eliminated language from the statute that caused unnecessary confusion over the definition of the local markets each paper serves.
The bill passed through House and Senate committee hearings with widespread support. Hills tells us it was also supported by local government groups, who “appreciated that MNA took the initiative to update the law.” MNA provided its members with a summary of the changes a few weeks before the law took effect.
Other states besides Minnesota have passed laws amending eligibility requirements for official newspapers. For instance, South Dakota authorized e-editions to satisfy print-publication frequency standards in a piece of legislation that passed a few months before HF-3682. But the only state we know that approved a bill liberalizing eligibility standards as comprehensively as Minnesota is Wisconsin.
Pursued aggressively by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, 2021 Wisconsin Act 32 (previously Senate Bill 51) expanded eligibility for newspapers qualified to publish notices. Most importantly, it allowed free-circulation newspapers to publish notices in municipalities that don’t have a paid-circulation newspaper to handle the responsibility. It did that by dropping the periodical-permit requirement for those publications. Aside from not having to possess a valid periodical permit, though, free papers must meet all of the other statutory requirements included in the Act to publish notices in Wisconsin.
WNA Executive Director Beth Bennett says so far there are only two cities in Wisconsin where free-circulation papers distribute notices.
Act 32 also authorized digital subscribers to count towards statutory paid-circulation thresholds; relaxed requirements relating to publication history and the physical location of newspaper offices; authorized electronic tear-sheeting; and required official newspapers in the state to post notices on their own website as well as WNA’s statewide public notice site. Publication on the WNA site had already been mandated by statute in 2015.
The Wisconsin Legislative Council prepared this memo summarizing the changes made by Act 32.