The Connecticut Supreme Court held last month that a newspaper used for decades by the tiny borough of Fenwick to issue its public notices qualified as an official newspaper even though the paper had no subscribers there.
The ruling overturned an appellate court decision invalidating a zoning regulation for lack of sufficient notice because the paper failed to satisfy a state law requiring official newspapers to have “substantial circulation in the municipality.”
Trends emerge in public notice bills
It used to be a relatively rare event when a bill remedying errors or omissions in public notice advertising was introduced. Or when legislation authorizing newspaper websites or e-editions to substitute for print was proposed. But those types of measures have proliferated in 2023, along with bills designed to fill jurisdictional holes in news deserts, which have been picking up steam for a few years now.
Newspaper notice targeted in multiple states
Bills have been introduced in at least 15 states allowing or requiring official notice to be published on various platforms other than local newspapers. That’s significantly more legislative activity focused on replacing newspaper notice than last year and approaches the level of the previous election off-year of 2021.
Year-in-Review: The five best new public notice laws of 2021
We began 2021 with a sense of dread. We feared it might be the year the first state legislature moved public notice from newspapers to government websites.
But that didn’t happen.
With only a handful of state legislatures still in session and little chance any of them will pass significant public notice legislation by the end of the year, newspaper notice is still alive and mostly well in every state.
Bills eliminating newspaper notice introduced in 10 states
PNRC is presently tracking about 60 different public notice bills introduced in 22 states so far in 2021. (We categorize all legislation that has any impact on public notice laws — even a minor impact — as public notice bills.)
Legislators in ten of those states have introduced bills that would move all or a significant percentage of notice from newspapers to government websites.
[See 2021 public notice legislation map]
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”.
Connecticut courts move notices to government website
The week before Christmas, Connecticut’s court system announced that as of Jan. 2, it would moving its notices from newspapers to a bare webpage on the Judicial Branch’s website. “It is expected that this will save a great deal of time and expense, and provide greater accuracy and broader notice than newspaper publication,” the judicial branch said in a statement posted on its website.
Connecticut courts are not required by state statute to publish notices in print, but until last month they relied on newspapers to satisfy their notice requirements, said Chris VandeHoef, executive director of the Connecticut Daily Newspapers Association.