After following a convoluted path that included two different bills, half a dozen amendments, five floor votes and a grand compromise, the Kentucky legislature passed a bill last week ensuring that the state’s public notice law would remain mostly unchanged.
The original public notice provisions of both HB195 and HB351 would have moved all government notice in the Bluegrass State from newspapers to government websites. Following a compromise earlier this year between the Kentucky Press Association (KPA) and the associations representing cities and counties in the state, HB195 was amended to exclude counties with population under 80,000. That amendment brought it closer to the state’s current law — passed two years ago and due to sunset this summer — which allows counties with population above 90,000 to run notices on their own websites; decreasing the population threshold by 10,000 would have increased the number of website-notice-only counties from eight to ten.
The Kentucky Compromise
Republican domination of Kentucky’s statehouse has not been a positive development for the Bluegrass State’s public notice laws, which have been under siege for the better part of the last decade. The fight came to a head in 2017, when the GOP assumed majority-party status in both chambers for the first time in the state’s modern history.
After failing to move public notice legislation via the normal committee process in 2017, state Senator Chris McDaniel (R-Covington) added language to a budget bill authorizing local governments in counties over 90,000 in population to publish most government notices on their own websites. McDaniel’s amendment also allowed school districts in the state to publish annual financial statements on their websites instead of newspapers. The bill eventually passed both the House and Senate, but former Governor Matt Bevin vetoed it because it raised taxes. His veto was overridden.
Property owners in Cape Coral get a rude surprise
In an unsigned editorial last month opposing Florida bills S1340 and HB7, the Lehigh Acres Citizen described a recent situation in which local residents were outraged to learn about zoning changes that normally would have been noticed in a newspaper, but weren’t.
In its opinion piece, the Lee County paper noted that proponents of moving notices to government websites say it would save money.
If government-website notice is cheaper, the Citizen asked, why isn’t it better? It then answered that question by describing what happened last year when the city of Cape Coral was allowed to overhaul its comprehensive plan without publishing a notice.
‘Enemy of the people’ rhetoric takes toll on public notice in statehouses
Bills have been introduced in at least seven states so far this year that would move most public notice from its traditional home in newspapers to lightly visited government websites. And at least of few of those bills were introduced by legislators who have had fraught relationships with the newspapers that cover them.
The states that appear at present to face the greatest potential peril — Florida, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri — have all been down this path before.
It was a very good year for public notice
The newspaper business has had a tough year but not because of public notice.
PNRC has been tracking about 360 distinct public-notice-related bills introduced in 2019, including 80 that passed and were signed into law. Most of these bills added new notice requirements. Moreover, the only one that will have an arguably significant impact on a state’s public notice statute — an eligibility law in Virginia — was supported by that state’s press association.
Michigan newspapers on high alert for new public notice bill
Newspapers in Michigan expect a bill to be introduced soon that would move all local government notices from newspapers to government websites. Although similar bills have been introduced every legislative session in Lansing for the last 12 years, this time Michigan newspapers are in a state of alarm.
“I’m more worried than I’ve ever been,” said Lisa McGraw, who has been public affairs manager of the Michigan Press Association (MPA) since 2003.
What makes this time different?
Unusual legislative maneuvers worry Texas newspapers
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”.
As legislatures adjourn for the year, newspaper notice as strong as ever
We’ve heard dire warnings for many years that public notice would soon be moving from newspapers to the internet. Yet here we are, twenty years after the pessimists first began predicting doom, and newspapers are still the primary vehicle for official notice in all 50 states.
And after several mostly successful years defending public notice in state legislatures, the newspaper industry is faring especially well on that front in 2019. With 33 legislative bodies already shuttered for the year and eight others scheduled to adjourn sine die by the end of the month, the third leg of the government-transparency stool is looking pretty stable.
In year of heightened legislative activity, Arkansas and Virginia score big wins
We’re only four months into the year and more public notice bills* have already been enacted than in all of 2018.
Like 2018, the truly bad bills — the existential threats to newspaper notice — are either going nowhere or have already been defeated. The two state press groups that appeared to face the greatest danger — Missouri Press Association and Hoosier State Press Association, both of which fought bills that would have eliminated newspaper notice of foreclosure sales — survived to fight another day. Indiana HB1212 passed the House but died in the Senate when the legislature adjourned last week. Missouri HB686/SB50 hasn’t managed to make it out of committee in either chamber with only two weeks left in the session even though an almost-identical piece of legislation came dangerously close to passage in 2018.
Foreclosure notices at issue in Midwestern states
Indiana Statehouse
A bill that would have eliminated the newspaper publication requirement for foreclosure notices in Indiana was narrowly defeated last week in a vote taken immediately following a committee hearing.
House Bill 1212 had passed the Indiana House 62-34 in January and was in danger of moving another step closer to passage when it was defeated by a vote of 5-4 in the Senate Local Government Committee.