The Texas Press Association (TPA) had a challenging year in the legislature. In this case, “challenging” isn’t deployed as a euphemism to describe a poor outcome. It’s used in its traditional sense to describe a situation that was demanding and arduous.
Texas legislators introduced 7,324 bills in the state’s 2019 biennial session that ended in late May. TPA was tracking 220 of them, including 60 that related directly or tangentially to public notice. Executive Vice President Donnis Baggett describes the session as “hellacious”.
Yet aside from some end-of-sessions shenanigans that saw the passage of a bill that eliminated a few minor notices, newspapers in the Lone Star State have much to celebrate about the 2019 session.
Most importantly, they were the major force behind a series of bills that will reverse recent state court rulings that diminished government transparency. Like many other states, they also had a pretty good year on the public notice front.
They easily defeated two bills sponsored by Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-Plano) that would have moved all official notice in the state to other venues. For Rep. Shaheen, just about any venue would be fine as long as it’s not a newspaper. His House Bill 2808 would have sanctioned the publication of notice in a laundry list of “alternative media”, including school newspapers and a homeowners’ association newsletter or magazine! Neither of his bills made it out of committee.
TPA also turned back a number of other bills that would have eliminated narrow categories of newspaper notice and applauded the passage of at least two pieces of legislation that did the opposite. HB1142 requires the publication of notice in a newspaper for hearings relating to health-care-provider participation programs in certain counties. HB71 mandates newspaper notice for hearings and elections held in connection with the creation of regional transit authorities, and to announce rules promulgated by such authorities.
Nevertheless, Baggett is concerned about the future of public notice in Texas. “It feels like there’s a thin sheet of ice over the lake we’re walking on” is how he describes his disquiet, which was stoked by some unusual maneuvering behind the passage of Senate Bill 2, a high-profile property tax reform measure that served as a late-session vehicle to eliminate a few notices. Late Friday afternoon on Memorial Day weekend, the closed-door conference committee negotiating the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill eliminated newspaper notice of the tax rates established for certain political subdivisions.
SB2 merely extended the logic of a bill enacted in 2013 that moved notice of city and county tax rates from newspapers to the internet. But the public notice provision was included in neither the House nor Senate version of SB2, so both chambers passed a resolution to venture “outside the bounds” of the bills that had already been approved to consider the conference committee version. They also required an up-or-down vote on that version and accepted no amendments.
“The fact they would take such extraordinary measures to eliminate a couple of minor notices worries me,” he said. “It suggests the move was orchestrated with the approval of legislative leadership.”
Nebraska Press Association Executive Director Allen Beerman is more sanguine about the future of public notice in his state. “People here are beginning to realize if newspapers go away, there’s nobody left to chronicle the news,” said Beerman, who recently announced he would retire in January 2020, after 55 years in the capitol serving first as the Secretary of State and then as NPA chief.
There’s good reason for Beerman to be feeling good about the future. Public notice had a banner year in the Cornhusker State, with a few notices added and almost nothing taken away.
Nebraska Legislative Bills 193 and 196 standardize the description of newspapers eligible to publish notices and clarify that circulation within the relevant jurisdiction is all that is required, not publishing or printing there. LB492 and LB595 both add newspaper notice in limited circumstances — before the issuance of bonds sold by a Regional Metropolitan Transit Authority in the case of the former, and to announce the intention of county boards to sell county-owned real estate in the latter.
The only Nebraska bill signed by the governor that reduced newspaper notice was LB 103, which authorizes political subdivisions with annual budgets under $10,000 or biennial budgets under $20,000 to post notice of hearings on property tax resolutions or ordinances at their principal headquarters instead of a newspaper. In other words, a bill that nobody in their right mind would oppose.
Here are brief descriptions of public-notice-related bills signed into law in two other states.
Indiana
When House Bill 1400 was introduced, it would have eliminated the requirement that school districts publish their annual financial reports in local newspapers. By the time HB1400 was signed by Governor Eric Holcomb, an amendment had turned it into a request for a study committee to determine how schools can streamline fiscal and compliance reporting. SB7 requires newspaper notice before any action can be taken to contest the validity of bonds issued by capital improvement boards for professional sports development areas. The Hoosier State Press Association also helped to defeat other bills that would have moved government and foreclosure notices out of newspapers. We covered those battles here and here.
Nevada
AB 270 requires regional transportation commissions to publish newspaper notice to advertise the sale of property acquired through eminent domain that is no longer needed for public use. AB 79 requires county treasurers to publish newspaper and government website notice before determining that tax-delinquent property has been abandoned. It also allows them to publish notice in a newspaper (“at least once a week for four consecutive weeks”) to advertise the sale of such property as an option in lieu of the physical posting of the notice in at least “three public places in the county.” AB345 was a high-profile voting rights bill that maintained most existing election-law notice mandates. But it also eliminated one election notice (summaries of statewide referendums) while adding another (polling-place locations where people are entitled to vote by personal appearance). Election officials are also still required to publish newspaper notice of election dates, and the location and hours of polling places, but under AB345 they will no longer include the names of candidates and the offices they are seeking in the notice.