Legislation that would move all or most public notice in three states to government websites passed significant milestones last month. Bills in Indiana and Kentucky were approved by the Houses of Representatives in those states by comfortable margins, while another in Idaho’s lower chamber barely squeaked by.

The most significant threat to newspaper notice appears to be the assault launched in Indiana, where HB-1312 would eventually allow all public and private notices in the state to be posted on a website established by the Indiana Office of Technology (IOT). It passed the House on Feb. 18 by a 57-36 vote.

Hoosier State Press Association Executive Director Amelia McClure notes that 11 Republicans, who control the Indiana House with a super majority, joined most Democrats in opposing the measure, so the final vote count was better than HSPA expected. She says the association is organizing a statehouse rally on March 19 “to show that newspapers are alive and well in Indiana.”

HB-1312 requires IOT to build a public notice website by July 1, 2026, and establishes a staggered implementation schedule under which all government and corporate entities would be able to post notices on the site by July 1, 2027. Notices could be published on local government websites in the period before the IOT site is authorized for use by every jurisdiction.

HB-1312 also allows notices to be published in local newspapers or on their websites, and stipulates that newspapers can charge the same rate for website notices that they can bill for print ads. But granting newspapers the authority to “compete” with the IOT website seems more rhetorical than substantive since HB-1312 prohibits the state agency from charging fees for the notices published on its taxpayer-subsidized website. As the old saying goes, it’s pretty hard to compete with free.

A fiscal impact statement filed in connection with the bill estimates the website would cost between $540,000 and $800,000 to “implement” in its first two years. It also predicts the site might require up to four additional staff members at an annual cost of $104,800 each to help with “on boarding and general upkeep after the on boarding process.”

There is no indication in the statement that the state plans to spend any money on marketing to inform Indiana residents where their notices have gone.

Two days after HB-1312 was approved, a similar measure passed the House of Representatives in Idaho on a 36-32 vote. But the outlook there appears to be more encouraging. Idaho H-166 authorizes all notices in the state to be posted on a centralized government website in lieu of newspaper publication, and requires the Controller’s Office to build the site and make it available in a staggered implementation schedule ending Jan. 1, 2027.

A representative of the Newspaper Association of Idaho (NAI) is optimistic about the group’s chances of stopping the bill in the Senate. He tells PNRC many public officials view the cost of building and maintaining the site as wasteful spending since NAI already has a statewide public notice site that is cross-linked to the Controller’s website. The bill’s sponsors estimate a new public notice website would cost the state $570,000 to build and $300,000 to maintain on an annual basis.

The NAI official also says that having the government control the posting of notices and their method of distribution is viewed with suspicion in the Idaho legislature.

In Kentucky, HB-368 would grant the authority to publish notices on government websites to the remaining city and county government units that aren’t already allowed to do so. It passed the House by a 62-30 margin on Feb. 26.

The Bluegrass State enacted a law in 2018 allowing cities and counties with population above 90,000 to move most notices to their own websites. The population threshold was reduced to 80,000 in 2020. The new bill authorizes all local governments to publish notices on their own sites but it would maintain provisions in the current law requiring them to also publish abbreviated newspaper ads informing readers the complete notices can be viewed on a government website.

Kentucky Press Association Executive Director David Thompson says despite the laws passed in 2018 and 2020, most governments in 80,000-plus population cities continue to publish their notices in newspapers. He also notes private and corporate notices are still required under current law to be published in newspapers. But even though the government-website laws enacted by the Kentucky legislature haven’t significantly changed the way local governments handle their notices, Thompson is still hopeful HB-368 will be killed in the Senate, not least because many cities in Kentucky are often negligent when it comes to updating their websites.

Other States

Legislation that would move most or all notices to government websites has been introduced in 12 other states, all of which have considered similar bills in previous sessions. The government-website bills in four of those states are already dead and the rest haven’t moved aside from SB-1073 in Arizona, which passed through a committee on a 4-3 vote last week and now awaits a vote in the Senate.

One of the other states considering legislation that would move notices to government websites is New Jersey, which we wrote about last month. On Friday, the New Jersey legislature approved another bill giving itself more time to amend the state’s public notice laws to solve the crisis precipitated when the Newhouse Media Group shuttered the print editions of the Star-Ledger and several affiliated newspapers. S-4136 extends the deadline for solving the problem until June 30 and maintains the status quo under which notices in the state can be published in the print editions or digital publications of existing official newspapers.

But this latest stopgap measure includes new provisions requiring official newspapers in the state to submit data within 30 days disclosing paid and unpaid print and digital subscribers by municipality; daily retail sales by location; page views for webpages displaying public notices; and amounts billed for public notice ads purchased by each public body since 2020.

In Mississippi, a bill more than doubling rates for private-party notices, last increased in 1998, passed the House 114-1. HB-598 builds in future annual increases based on the Consumer Price Index and boosts proof-of-publication fees from $3 to $5. It also joins the recent parade of state legislation redressing publication delays and errors. Mississippi’s version of remediation requires notices to be republished within two days of the original publication date in a newspaper, on a newspaper website or on a local government website, and on the Mississippi Press Association’s statewide public notice site. It also requires newspapers to publish corrected notices in the following issue of their print edition.

The California Newspaper Publishers Association is backing a new, stripped-down version of a bill requiring official newspapers in the state to also publish notices they run in print on their “website or electronic newspaper” and on CNPA’s statewide site. A similar bill approved last year by the California legislature by a combined vote of 112-1 was inexplicably vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. In his veto statement, Newsom said he vetoed the bill because he was concerned small papers couldn’t afford to comply with it even though it was the only web-posting statute ever approved in the U.S. that included an exemption for small papers.

Finally, the self-storage industry has been especially aggressive this year in its ongoing effort to avoid publishing newspaper notices before storage facilities can execute lien sales on their customers’ property. Self-storage legislation has been introduced in ten states, including a bill that passed the Georgia House last week and others that were recommended by committees in Missouri and Idaho. The legislation in Idaho, which would completely eliminate all pre-lien-sale notice, is the least transparent self-storage bill we’ve ever seen.