Many in the newspaper industry are wondering how public notice laws will fare in light of the fiscal crises precipitated in many states by the pandemic. Interim committee hearings last month in Wyoming and Arkansas suggest the answer may depend, at least in part, on the size and scale of each state’s budget deficit.
The Sept. 11 hearing in Cheyenne left Wyoming Press Association (WPA) Executive Director Darcie Hoffland in a state of heightened concern. By a 10-3 vote, the joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee approved a motion to direct the Legislative Service Office to draft a bill that would move notices for meeting minutes and government-employee salaries from newspapers to local government websites. [CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated the motion was “to introduce a bill next session” that would move the notices.]
Disastrous decision to limit print surveys undermines Census
The federal government is finding it more difficult than usual to get people to complete the 2020 Census. The headline on Politico Magazine’s recent article about the once-every-decade constitutional exercise — “A Brush with Catastrophe: Inside the 2020 Census Meltdown” — suggests the scale of the problem.
The meltdown is due, in part, to the pandemic and the Trump Administration’s aggressive maneuvers to obstruct the count. But another significant driver has been the Census Bureau’s incomprehensible decision to force most Americans to respond to the survey via the internet.
PNRC contest winners’ concerns often disregarded by officials
Small towns are different.
Take Crosby, North Dakota, population 1,300, for instance. It’s located in the upper northwest corner of the state, approximately 35 miles east of Montana and six miles south of the Canadian border. Many folks there have an extraordinary interest in the public notices published in the local paper, the Journal.
“Sometimes we get calls from people aware of something happening in town and wondering why a notice about it wasn’t published in the paper,” says Cecile Wehrman (pictured on left in photo above), the Journal’s editor and publisher.
Digital news’ public notice role overstated in Poynter article
In a kind of follow-up to a previous story he reported 10 years ago on government subsidies for newspapers, former newspaper editor David Westphal took a close look earlier this month for the Poynter Institute at the state of public notice.
Although we’re never happy when public notice is framed as a government subsidy, as opposed to payment for service rendered, we concede reasonable people may disagree on that point. We also know from working with him as a source on the story that Westphal takes his responsibility to report the issue fairly and accurately quite seriously. Few journalists have covered public notice with more insight and intelligence than Westphal brings to this story.
Governor calls newspaper notice requirement ‘stupid’
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) clearly appreciates good journalism and supports a free and independent press. But it’s also clear he hasn’t thought very deeply about public notice and he is too confident of his understanding of the issue.
We base that judgment on extemporaneous remarks Colorado’s chief executive made during an April 17 press conference on the state’s response to COVID-19.
With about 15 minutes remaining in the press conference, Denver Post reporter Alex Burness asked the governor for his thoughts on the impact of news deserts in the state and whether he believes government support or funding of the news business is appropriate.
Cuomo uses emergency powers to suspend notices
Before it approved a budget in the early morning hours and left Albany last month as the coronavirus first struck the state with full force, the New York legislature granted Gov. Andrew Cuomo (pictured at left) emergency power to suspend laws he believes compromise public health. The governor has not been shy about exercising his new exigent authority.
On April 20, Cuomo issued an executive order that, among other things, allowed cities and towns in the state to file property tax assessment rolls up to 30 days later than the June 1 statutory deadline, and authorized them to publish the assessment notices “solely online so long as the date for hearing complaints is prominently displayed”.
Which public notice bill will become law in Kentucky?
It’s been over a month since the Kentucky legislature passed two different, slightly conflicting public notice bills. There has been some confusion about which one will become law when the current statute sunsets on June 30, but that question appears to have been answered last week.
When we last left the Bluegrass State, HB195 had been vetoed by Gov. Andy Beshear (D) and HB351 had not. The governor later used his line-item veto to strike a number of provisions in HB351, a budget bill, including those relating to public notice. The Republican-dominated legislature ultimately overturned both of Beshear’s vetoes.
The danger of suspending publication during the COVID-19 crisis
The town of Glastonbury, Connecticut announced last week it would begin publishing public notices on its website in lieu of the newspaper notice normally required by law, according to Manchester’s Journal Inquirer. In its statement, Glastonbury cited an emergency order issued on March 21 by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) that “suspended and modified” the state’s public notice laws to allow notices “to be published electronically on a municipality’s or agency’s website”.
New Kentucky public notice law maintains status quo ante
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.
What’s happening with foreclosure notices?
COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on life as we know it. Little has been left untouched, including the mortgage market and foreclosure process.
At the federal level, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, is providing payment forbearance for up to 12 months to borrowers impacted by the crisis. FHFA also directed Fannie and Freddie to suspend foreclosures for at least 60 days. The Department of Housing and Urban Development also suspended evictions and foreclosures until the end of April.
Many state and local governments are also offering relief to borrowers affected by the crisis.
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.