For over 20 years, newspapers and their state press associations turned back every bill that authorized government units to issue public notice via their own websites instead of local newspapers. That winning streak ended last year when the Florida legislature gave state agencies and local governments the option to post notices on county websites.
The new law, which took effect on Jan. 1, has one upside. It set in motion a vast experiment that will tell us what local governments do when given this choice. Five weeks into the new year an answer is beginning to emerge: It depends primarily on the motivations of local elected officials and the actions local newspapers take in response to the challenge.
After its bill passes, Guilford County loses interest in notifying citizens
Two nearly identical public notice bills have been introduced in North Carolina. Both bills would allow multiple counties, and the municipalities within those counties, to adopt ordinances authorizing them to move their notices from newspapers to the county website. H35 would apply to 11 counties and HB51 would impact 13 others.
Their Republican sponsors (one co-sponsor is a Democrat) structured the bills so oddly to avoid the almost-certain veto of Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. In North Carolina, the governor can’t veto legislation filed as a “local bill”, and local bills are limited to 14 counties.
Newspaper Notice Helps Save County’s Oldest Grave
Theophilus Hunter was a big deal in Wake County, North Carolina, and in Raleigh, the county seat. A Revolutionary War leader who owned a popular lodge in the area and held official posts in both the city and county, Hunter is considered a local founding father by some residents. When he died in 1798, he was buried in an area that is now close to the N.C. State University campus.
It will remain there for now, along with the 17 unmarked graves, as a result of a public notice published in Raleigh’s News & Observer.
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.
North Carolina County Requests Own Local Notice Bill
Rockingham County’s Board of Commissioners last month approved a referendum asking the state legislature to allow all government units in Rockingham to publish public notices on the county’s official website rather than in local newspapers.
The resolution specifically referenced the General Assembly’s passage two weeks earlier of Sen. Trudy Wade’s (R-Guilford) Senate Bill 181, which authorized neighboring Guilford County to move all public notices in the county from newspapers to its official website. Wade’s bill was almost identical to House Bill 205, an earlier measure she backed that passed the legislature this summer but was swiftly vetoed by Governor Roy Cooper (D). However, unlike HB 205, Wade’s latest effort to eliminate newspaper notice was drafted as a veto-proof “local” bill.
N.C. Public Notice Legislation Resurrected as Local Bill
North Carolina State Sen. Trudy Wade’s battle to eliminate public notice in newspapers is set to move to a new front this week. According to the News & Record, the state legislature is expected to consider a local version of her public notice bill when it reconvenes on Wednesday.
Wade’s previous public notice bills have been state legislation. Even her measure that was vetoed in July by Gov. Roy Cooper — which had been amended minutes before it passed to focus solely on Guilford County — was a North Carolina bill. Like that bill, her latest effort would affect only Guilford County, but it has been written as a piece of local legislation. Local legislation can’t be vetoed by the governor.
N.C. Governor’s Public Notice Veto Still Stands
This story was updated on Sept. 5.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a bad public notice bill is safe for now.
The state’s legislature adjourned for the year on Aug. 31 without ever having voted whether to overturn the governor’s veto of HB 205, Sen. Trudy Wade’s (R-Guilford) apparent effort to punish the newspapers in her district.
N.C. County Targeted in Public Notice Bill
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
North Carolina State Senator Trudy Wade (R-Greensboro, photo on left) heeded that advice and last week finally succeeded in passing a bill that makes government less transparent.
After her two previous efforts to move public notice in the state from newspapers to government websites failed, in March Wade introduced another sweeping revision of the state’s public notice laws. When her bill stalled in the House, as it had in the previous legislative session, Wade didn’t give up.
Another Governor Takes Aim at Public Notice
We have found a governor whose animus for newspapers may exceed Chris Christie’s.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (photo on left) dislikes the papers in his state so intensely he vetoed a bill last month requiring them to continue to post public notices on their own websites at no extra charge to the state. Overwhelming majorities in the legislature overrode his veto the following week.
NC County Gets Great Return on Delinquent Tax Notice
Nobody reads the paper anymore?
Tell that to Moore County Tax Administrator Gary Briggs, whose office recently collected 60 percent of the $1.37 million it was owed by delinquent taxpayers after publishing their names in the local newspaper, The Pilot.
Briggs published the list on March 8 as a 12-page special section in The Pilot, at a cost of $8,000. A month later his office had collected almost $821,000 of its outstanding tax debt, according to The Pilot.