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.
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.
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.
‘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.
Foreclosure Bill on Move in Missouri; Some Notices Eliminated in Kentucky
A bill that would allow mortgage trustees in Missouri to publish foreclosure notices on websites rather than newspapers picked up momentum yesterday afternoon when it received a favorable vote in the House Legislative Oversight Committee. The next step is the House floor.
SB 909 is widely believed to be an effort by trustees in this nonjudicial foreclosure state to profit off the notices they are required to publish before auctioning delinquent properties to the highest bidders. Two of the largest trustee law firms in Missouri have been the primary proponents of the legislation.