As the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association (MDDC) had urged him to, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore last month vetoed House Bill 1258, which would have required Registers of Wills in each county to publish estate notices on a government website instead of local newspapers. The bill passed unanimously in both houses of the state legislature before it was vetoed.



In his extraordinarily frank veto letter, the governor acknowledged that existing notice requirements “present a financial burden on local and state governments as well as individual citizens.” But he argued that rapidly eliminating a significant source of advertising revenue like probate notices would endanger local newspapers, the survival of which he called “a vital public interest.”



“(D)emocracy can not function effectively in the absence of a free press that provides objective information to the citizenry about crucial events in government and in our communities,” said the governor.



Gov. Moore also claimed legislators were not given the opportunity “to balance these two significant public interests, as representatives of the newspaper industry failed entirely to engage in public hearings, testimony, or conversations about the bill.” MDDC was unaware of the bill until it passed both houses. The press association doesn’t employ a contract lobbyist and has only two full-time employees while representing newspapers in three separate jurisdictions.



The governor said he vetoed the bill because the lack of an adversarial legislative process forestalled “robust conversation and creation of broader policy solutions that address all public interests.”



“We need a broader conversation about public notices rather than a conversation focused solely on estate notices,” he said, putting the newspaper industry on notice that the state’s public notice laws would be up for discussion in the next legislative session.



MDDC Executive Director Rebecca Snyder thinks her association is well positioned for that conversation, primarily because the veto battle over HB-1258 was a “galvanizing moment.” Although the association was caught by surprise when the bill passed, Snyder was astonished by the outpouring of support for a veto once MDDC began lobbying for one.



“We got support from every level, including newspaper publishers, the Newspaper Guild and members of the public who sent letters and called the governor’s office,” says Snyder. “We also asked members to publish our editorial in favor of a veto and I got more feedback on it than anything I’ve written in 10 years here.”



Snyder was especially gratified when legislators began pledging their support.



“These were legislators who voted in favor of the bill, later helping us to get it vetoed,” she says. “They understood the policy implications were too important to simply wave it away with a ‘you snooze, you lose’.

“They showed a strong commitment to transparency and the importance of an independent news media,” she continued. “We now have an opportunity to build on that for other public policy issues by saying, ‘If you want local news, we have to shore it up’.”



Snyder also feels confident about the next session because of the goodwill MDDC engendered earlier this year by reaching a compromise with Dorchester County officials on a different public notice bill.



The Dorchester bill was originally introduced as a statewide measure allowing government units to publish notices on local news websites in lieu of local newspapers. When MDDC learned county officials simply wanted a more flexible schedule than print can accommodate it suggested a different approach that helped county commissioners meet their needs. The final version of the bill signed by Gov. Moore limits its applicability to Dorchester County and requires notices there to be published in a newspaper that distributes in both “print and digital format.”



The bill also stipulates that the time period required by statute for a particular notice begins tolling as soon as it is first published in either format. And if there isn’t a newspaper in the county that publishes in both formats, the county can publish its notices in “in any digital publication … that regularly contains local news and information for Dorchester County.”



“We worked really hard to get to that compromise,” says Snyder. “I feel like we earned trust because of our good faith in finding a solution that worked for everybody.”

Minnesota

The compromise over school district notices we reported on last month was approved by a conference committee and signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz. The original bill supported by the Minnesota School Boards Association authorized all school districts to publish their official proceedings on their own websites instead of in local newspapers. The approach suggested by the Minnesota Newspaper Association (MNA) and ultimately adopted by the legislature grants such authority only temporarily when an official newspaper closes and a school district doesn’t have another qualified paper available to publish the proceedings.



A separate measure also signed by the governor specifically sanctions government website notice in the four school districts left without official newspapers when Alden Global Capital shuttered eight papers in Minnesota earlier this year.



Both laws are set to expire August 1, 2026.

Gov. Walz also signed at least two bills that incidentally require new newspaper notices, including one relating to applications to construct large energy infrastructure facilities and another pertaining to the development of a biotech innovation district in Brooklyn Park. Nevertheless, MNA reported in a recent issue of its weekly newsletter that “conversations with legislators and representatives of other local government interests” have led it to expect that newspaper notice “will be targeted in legislative sessions for the foreseeable future.”



Louisiana

The compromise measure in Louisiana we wrote about last month also advanced as expected. House Bill 977 relaxes eligibility standards to allow more papers in the state to qualify to publish notices. It was approved unanimously by the Senate and now awaits the governor’s signature.

Louisiana is still on track to begin requiring government units and private parties to publish notices on newspaper websites in lieu of their print editions in 2027.