Wichita became the latest and most significant municipality in Kansas to approve a charter ordinance anointing the city’s website as its “official newspaper.” But the new ordinance came with a twist: It included a provision calling for the city to also publish its notices in a “secondary print source.”

Wichita is at least the fifth municipality in Kansas to replace its official newspaper with the city website despite a state law requiring notices to be published in a local paper. Attorney General Kris Kobach gave them the green light when he issued a legal opinion last year declaring that home-rule provisions in the state’s constitution “allows cities to exempt themselves from nonuniform acts of the Legislature.” (As the last sentence in the opinion notes, website notice isn’t sufficient when a particular type of notice is specifically mandated by statute, e.g., budget notices, treasurer’s reports, etc.)