We’re only four months into the year and more public notice bills* have already been enacted than in all of 2018.

Like 2018, the truly bad bills — the existential threats to newspaper notice — are either going nowhere or have already been defeated. The two state press groups that appeared to face the greatest danger — Missouri Press Association and Hoosier State Press Association, both of which fought bills that would have eliminated newspaper notice of foreclosure sales — survived to fight another day. Indiana HB1212 passed the House but died in the Senate when the legislature adjourned last week. Missouri HB686/SB50 hasn’t managed to make it out of committee in either chamber with only two weeks left in the session even though an almost-identical piece of legislation came dangerously close to passage in 2018.

Two other state press associations that saw heightened legislative activity around public notice this year ended their sessions with big wins. The Virginia Press Association helped to shepherd a bill to passage that revamps public notice eligibility rules in a way that could serve as a model for other states. The Arkansas Press Association helped to defeat or reshape three bills that would have chipped away at newspaper notice in their state.

The story in Virginia began two years ago, when a House member introduced a bill that would have stripped public notice from newspapers in towns with populations above 50,000. VPA convinced the legislator to withdraw the bill and then convened a task force of lawmakers, lobbyists and trade associations to look closely at the state’s public notice laws. VPA Executive Director Betsy Edwards credits the task force — and a presentation about the importance of public notice she made to legislators and government representatives — as changing the culture around the issue in the state. She notes this session was the first in many years in Virginia in which no legislation was introduced to move notices out of newspapers.

In 2018, VPA and other task force members pushed a bill that would have increased circulation, content, placement and archiving requirements for newspapers eligible to publish public notices. It also would have allowed localities to petition state courts to select another newspaper when none meeting those qualifications “publish” within its jurisdiction. It didn’t make it out of committee.

This session, VPA took what Edwards considers a stronger bill to Jennifer Boysko, a Democratic state senator from Herndon, an exurb of Washington, D.C. that lost its newspaper and had limited options for publishing its notices. Sen. Boysko had introduced anti-public notice legislation in the past, but VPA had helped turn her into an advocate. Edwards considered her the perfect sponsor.

Boysco’s Senate Bill 1638 (now §8.01-324 of the Virginia Code) passed both the Senate and House unanimously and takes effect on July 1. It beefs up requirements for newspapers to qualify to publish notices and provides towns and counties with options when they don’t have an eligible newspaper published in their jurisdiction. More specifically, it:

• Increases the publication frequency required to serve as an official newspaper from 24 to 50 weeks
• Requires public notice newspapers to provide news coverage for the area in which notice is published
• Changes the mailing permit mandate from “second-class” to “periodical” and requires newspapers to publish an annual USPA statement of ownership; it also allows papers that don’t meet this requirement to petition courts to serve as an official newspaper
• Requires papers to publish boldface section headers in at least 24-point type and to maintain at least three years of print archives
• Requires official newspapers to publish all notices on VPA’s statewide public notice website
• Allows localities without a newspaper meeting all of these conditions to petition courts to publish their notices “in another printed medium”

In addition to the task force and public-notice presentation, Edwards says she curried favor with government representatives by promising to maintain a qualified list of newspapers by town and county, and to publish a directory of every public notice in the Virginia Code. She credits the last idea to Oklahoma Press Association Executive Director Mark Thomas.

Unlike VPA, the Arkansas Press Association was forced to play defense from day one of the 2019 session. APA faced a slew of legislation that would have kneecapped newspaper notice. One bill even passed a House Committee the first week legislators met.

APA’s three primary public notice battles were fought over House Bills 1041 and 1896, and Senate Bill 409.

HB1041 would have raised the threshold for bid notices for Arkansas cities from $20,000 to $50,000, significantly diminishing the number of bid notices they would have to publish. The bill narrowly passed the House in January, with supporters arguing it would make procurement more efficient and less expensive. Executive Director Ashley Wimberley says APA had to kill the bill two or three times in the Senate but it kept coming back. In a last-ditch effort to get it passed, the sponsor reduced the amended threshold to $35,000 near the end of the session but was never able to get the bill out of committee in the upper chamber.

HB1896 would have allowed hearing notices for petitions to establish local “improvement districts” to be published on the Secretary of State’s website in lieu of newspapers. The bill that ultimately passed requires publication in both a newspaper and the SOS website.

The final disposition of SB409 was perhaps APA’s most impressive bit of maneuvering. As originally drafted, it would have allowed local government units to satisfy state purchasing requirements by providing notice of bid solicitations via their websites. The bill was being pushed by Louisiana-based Central Bidding, an electronic-bidding service vendor. In addition to maintaining newspaper notice, the final version of the bill signed by the Governor eliminated the option previously sanctioned by the statute to publish bid notices in trade journals instead of newspapers. SB409 also requires five weeks of newspaper notice for local governments to announce when they sign a contract with an electronic-bid vendor.

Wimberley credits APA’s highly engaged membership with making the difference in all of these battles. “APA members had a substantial influence on these bills through their calls, emails and meetings with legislators,” she says. “It was very important for legislators to hear from local publishers and to have everyone pushing in the same direction.”

Wimberley hopes not to have to repeat this year’s epic struggle and plans to be more proactive next session. APA is now working on establishing a public notice advisory committee that will include publishers, lobbyists and other interested parties, to help change the culture around public notice in Arkansas in time for next year’s session.

* “Public notice bills” = all bills relating in any way to public notice, even those where notice is not the primary focus of the legislation.