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.
Missouri papers take the offensive; unusual notice bills introduced in Idaho and West Virginia
Newspapers in Missouri are going on the offensive in their battle to save public notice in their state.
Fighting separate bills that would move all government and foreclosure notice in the state from newspapers to government and law-firm websites, the Missouri Press Association (MPA) threw its support behind Senate Bill 515, introduced last week on the final day for filing new legislation in Jefferson City. SB 515 would require newspapers in the state that publish notices to also post them on MPA’s statewide public notice site. It would also limit rates by requiring newspapers to include volume or repeat-buyer discounts, and by mandating lower prices for “second and successive insertions”.
Missouri, Indiana face high-stakes battles
As the new year dawned and state legislatures reconvened in January, two press associations in the Midwest found themselves in an existential battle to save newspaper notice in their states. The Missouri Press Association (MPA) and the Hoosier State Press Association (HSPA) are fighting several bills with serious prospects for passage that would move government and foreclosure notices to the web.
The Year in Public Notice Legislation
Despite a bit of early angst in a few states, 2018 ended up being a relatively benign year for public notice.
PNRC has tracked about 160 separate public notice bills this year, just a bit more than in 2017. Only 24 were enacted into law and most were vanishingly minor. As is generally the case with minor public notice legislation, almost all of the notice changes were incidental to the primary focus of the legislation. For example, a bill in New Jersey added several new instances of both newspaper and government website notice in connection with public-private partnership agreements for certain building and highway infrastructure projects.
N.C. Papers File Suit to Block Guilford County Law
Four newspaper companies publishing in Guilford County filed suit this afternoon alleging that a law passed last year by the General Assembly allowing the county to publish and sell public notices on its own website violates the North Carolina Constitution. The companies are asking the Superior Court of Wake County Superior Court to award money damages and issue a permanent injunction preventing the law from being enforced.
Governor Vetoes Public Notice Bill in Colorado
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper yesterday vetoed a bill that would have substantially reduced a category of newspaper notice in the state beginning in 2022.
Senate Bill 156 would have allowed counties to publish salary reports, financial statements and monthly expense reports on their own websites in lieu of newspapers. The legislation would still have required counties to publish newspaper notices providing a website address for each report.
It’s Shaping up to Be a Good Year for Public Notice
A great deal of bad legislation died when 15 more state legislatures adjourned in May, including bills in five states that would have removed all or large segments of public notice advertising from newspapers.
The most significant legislation to expire was a bill in Missouri that was close to passage and would have shifted foreclosure notices from newspapers to mortgage-trustee websites. Missouri House Bill 1651 and its Senate companion were both voted out of committee following hearings earlier this year, but neither got to the floor for a vote before the legislature packed it in for the year in mid-May.