Article III, Section 13(A) of Louisiana’s Constitution requires legislators to publish two notices in a local paper when they plan to introduce a “local or special law” in the state legislature. The notices must “state the substance of the contemplated law, and every such bill shall recite that notice has been given.”
So: No notice, no bill.
Some Louisiana lawmakers may have been prevented from introducing local bills this year due to a lack of notice. We know this because — much to the chagrin of the Louisiana Press Association (LPA) — it became a topic of discussion in the legislature during discussions over Senate Bill 101, which authorized self-storage facilities to advertise lien sales “on a publicly accessible website that conducts personal property auctions” in lieu of a newspaper.
According to Rep. Tanner Magee (R-Houma) and a few of his colleagues, the notices didn’t get published because the newspapers they were sent to neglected to publish them.
“We lost four House bills this year — four!” Rep. Magee (pictured above) said on the House floor on May 19 during debate on SB-101, holding up four fingers on each hand to emphasize the significance of the loss.
“Members introduced bills this year that they didn’t get to run because the local paper didn’t properly advertise it,” Rep. Magee continued. “We did our job, they did not do theirs. So this theory that the local paper is going to magnificently do the job better than a text message, email or website is kind of silly.”
[Watch video of the debate over SB-101 from 2:46:40 to 3:23:15]
A few minutes after those comments, SB-101 passed the House by a vote 75-24. It was signed into law by the Governor John Bel Edwards on June 7.
The bill almost certainly would have passed despite Rep. Magee’s complaints about the negligence of a few newspapers in the state. The self-storage industry is dominated by venture capital investors who can afford to hire well-connected, high-powered lobbyists. They’re worthy adversaries. Bills eliminating self-storage notices were also signed into law this year in Alabama, Kansas and North Dakota.
Rep. Magee didn’t have all of his facts straight, according to LPA, but it’s clear some newspapers in Louisiana failed to run timely notices for local bills this session. And there’s no question that it’s much more difficult to maintain legislative support for newspaper notice when some newspapers provide poor customer service to their public notice clients. Opponents will weaponize their neglect.
As if to underscore that point, the failure to run the local-bill notices came up again the following day during a committee hearing on another bill.
“These are not isolated issues,” LPA Executive Director Jerry Raehal said in a column he wrote to members following the bill’s passage. “I’ve received calls from people frustrated that they cannot get in touch with someone to place a public notice, as well as issues with public notices not running.
“I’m confident that 99% of public notices run without a hitch,” Raehal added, “but difficulties in getting them placed and the 1% of them that don’t are a problem exacerbated by the current climate.”