Committees formed to review public notice laws in two states adjourned last month after showing strong support for maintaining public notices in newspapers. Wisconsin’s Legislative Study Committee on Publication of Government Documents and Legal Notices ended its review on Oct. 10, deciding to recommend only one change to a minor category of notices. Three days later, the Kentucky General Assembly’s Program Review and Investigations Committee ended its 27-month study with no changes.
California Governor Signs Law Redefining Public Notice Jurisdictions
California Governor Jerry Brown signed an omnibus bill on Sept. 27 that included comprehensive changes to the state’s public notice law. The changes brought clarity to jurisdictional issues relating to the publication of public notices in the state. The issues first became a concern almost 20 years ago, when the state reorganized its judicial system.
According to the California Newspaper Publishers Association, which supported the legislation, the new law creates Public Notice Districts to define where local notices must be published. These new geographical designations will replace Judicial Districts, which were eliminated when the state’s trial courts were unified in each county in 1998. The law still requires notices to be published in newspapers of general circulation, and it automatically recognizes newspapers currently adjudicated to accept such notices.
EPA Eliminates Mandatory Newspaper Notice for Clean Air Act Permits
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced it was eliminating the mandatory requirement to provide newspaper notice of permitting and implementation actions under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The rule, which will take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register, requires notification on EPA’s new “National Public Notices Website” and allows other agencies that implement EPA-approved CAA programs to publish notices on their websites as well.
The rule doesn’t prevent permitting authorities from supplementing notice on their own websites with newspaper notice. In addition, it doesn’t override state laws requiring state and local environmental agencies to use newspapers to notify the public about EPA-approved permitting actions under the CAA. In those states, new laws would have to be passed to eliminate the newspaper-notice requirement.
Q&A: Steve Key, Hoosier State Press Association
Florida Governor Issues Order Requiring Immediate Notice of Pollution Incidents
Florida Gov. Rick Scott last week ordered the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to develop new rules requiring public and private facilities “to provide notification of incidents of pollution within 24 hours to DEP, local governments and the general public through the media.” DEP quickly issued an emergency order increasing notification requirements for pollution incidents, as well as a notice of rulemaking to make it permanent after the emergency expires in 90 days. Under the new rules, facility owners must notify “local broadcast television affiliates and a newspaper of general circulation in the area of the contamination.” The rules significantly change the current “patchwork quilt of notice requirements,” according to an attorney writing in the Daily Business Review (registration required).
Henninger Presents Public Notice Design Tips at Conference
Ed Henninger (photo courtesy Stan Schwartz, NNA) challenged publishers to add some design spice to their public notices during his speech at PNRC’s Best Practices conference on Sept. 22 in Franklin, Tenn. “If you make public notices difficult to read and treat them like an afterthought, nobody is going to look at them,” he said. Henninger followed with a humorous, rapid-fire presentation offering the following ideas:
- Use a visual header in the public notice section (e.g., photo of the local courthouse)
- Publish the contact information of public notice personnel
- Use headlines to break up groups of public notices
PNRC Holds First Conference Devoted to Public Notice
The Public Notice Resource Center’s premier public notice conference packed the room Sept. 22 on the first day of the National Newspaper Association’s Annual Convention in Franklin, Tenn. The half-day symposium featured panels on best practices, legislative strategy and the importance of publishing public notices on the web, and presentations on design and the state of public notice. The conference was sponsored by Tecnavia, Nevada Legal News and the Illinois Press Association.
PNRC Issues Best Practices Guide
The Public Notice Resource Center issued “Best Practices for Public Notice” on Sept. 22 at its first industry-wide symposium on public notice. The brief guide is based on research by PNRC that identified the practices that publishers must follow to protect newspaper public notice and the public’s right to know. It includes easy-to-read, graphical presentations of the best practices as well as the full document issued by the charitable organization, whose mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on public and private notifications to the public through local newspapers, and to educate the public on the value and use of its right to know.
New York Bill Allows Emailing of Meeting Notices to Newspapers
Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a new law clarifying that public meeting notices required by state law may be emailed to newspapers for publication. A review of the applicable law indicates the statute formerly stated merely that notice “shall be given to the news media.” The bill signed by Gov. Cuomo adds the words “or electronically transmitted” to the statute. “This is a positive step that will save time in getting notices to the media and therefore getting them out to the public,” the president of the New York State Town Clerks Association told the Albany Times Union. The new law also requires notices of government meetings that are live streamed to the public to include the web address of the site streaming the meeting.
Government Website Leaves Residents with Little Notice about Bee-Killing Zika Spray
Many residents in Dorchester County, South Carolina were upset by the lack of notice from government officials about a recent aerial insecticide spray that killed millions of honeybees, according to USA Today. The county sprayed naled, which is harmful to bees and other insects, in order to kill mosquitos that are known to carry Zika.
A local TV news station reported that many people said they had been notified by phone only 10 hours before the spray. County officials responded by noting that they had also posted a notice on the county website two days earlier.