The first quarter has ended and the legislative front remains relatively calm. Missouri is still the only state in immediate peril of passing a major public notice bill, but even there newspapers are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel; the two measures that have given public notice advocates in the Show Me State cause for concern didn’t budge last month.
Many bad public notice bills still litter the committees of the 30+ state legislatures that haven’t adjourned yet, but none appear to have any momentum. Nevertheless, several minor bills — some that add newspaper notice and a few that reduce it — have passed so far this year. Here’s the round up.
Alabama
HB 243 authorizes the Department of Transportation to contract for road construction and maintenance projects under $250,000 without advertising in newspapers for sealed bids, as long as the project is listed on the DOT website and the total cost of all such projects doesn’t exceed an annual aggregate of $1 million. The threshold below which newspaper notice is not required remains $50,000 for all other awarding authorities in the state.
Arizona
HB 2198 was passed and sent to the governor last week. It reduces the size of delinquent real-estate tax lists published in newspapers by moving the legal description of each parcel to county websites. County treasurers in the state are still required to publish parcel numbers and property account numbers in an official newspaper. The Arizona Newspapers Association worked with the Arizona Association of Counties on the bill and didn’t take a position on it.
Florida
H 0703 requires water management districts in the state to provide notice on their websites before selling surplus land; they are also still required to provide notice via an official newspaper. H 1393 created the Water Street Tampa Improvement District and adopted various newspaper notice requirements in connection with the district.
South Dakota
HB 1178 requires the Department of Legislative Audit to notify the public via both a newspaper and the department’s website when municipalities and various other government units fail to submit timely audit reports.
Virginia
HB 1206 allows the Water Control Board to publish abbreviated newspaper notice of Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits “to the extent authorized by federal law and if the permit applicant so chooses.” The original version of the bill required the Board to create “an online system for public notice”; that mandate was eliminated prior to passage.
Washington
HB 2057 empowers three consecutive weekly publications of newspaper notice to serve as constructive notice to prospective heirs in cases where property has been abandoned or is in foreclosure and the “successors in interest” can’t be identified. It awaits the governor’s signature.
Wisconsin
The Wisconsin legislature passed several minor bills. All must still be signed by the governor to become law. AB 120 authorizes municipalities to publish summaries for the second and third insertions of certain notices, as long as the summarized notice also indicates where the complete text can be read. The first notice must still be published in full in a newspaper. The Wisconsin Newspaper Association (WNA) didn’t oppose the measure, which doesn’t affect court-mandated notices.
AB 469 reduces from two to one the number of newspaper notices self-storage operators must publish before exercising a lien. SB 583 exempts security sales from registration if, among other factors, the solicitation of interest is made in a newspaper. And as we noted last month, the legislature also approved a bill supported by WNA allowing free-circulation newspapers that meet existing content requirements to publish notices in municipalities without a paid circulation paper.