This story was originally published on Sept. 25 and was updated on Oct. 3. New material is italicized.
Last month, we reported that through the end of the summer there were no states that had approved legislation significantly altering their public notice laws. We were wrong.
Unbeknownst to most in the newspaper business, two months earlier Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had signed into law measures buried within the legislature’s 6,198-page budget bill that will bring sweeping changes to the state’s public notice regime. DeWine signed the bill less than a week after it passed both the GOP-dominated state House and Senate by wide margins on June 30.
Most importantly, Ohio HB-33 allows municipalities to publish many or most of their notices on their own websites and social media feeds or on the Ohio News Media Association’s statewide public notice website, instead of publishing them in local newspapers or legal journals. The bill also reduces the number of newspaper ads required to be published by some municipalities and state agencies in connection with specific types of notices; allows Ohio’s state environmental agency to publish all of its notices on its website instead of local newspapers and legal journals; and raises the spending threshold above which many or most government agencies are required to publish newspaper notices soliciting bids. The law takes effect on Oct. 3.
[Read PNRC’s analysis of Ohio HB-33]
Perhaps most bizarrely, HB-33 extends the state’s prohibition against newspapers charging a fee for publishing notices on ONMA’s statewide public notice website. (Ohio was one of the first states to pass a law requiring newspapers to publish their paid print notices free of charge on a state press association website. That law remains on the books.) The proscription against compensation now includes situations in which “the notice or advertisement is not otherwise published in a newspaper or journal.” Taken in tandem with the provision in HB-33 allowing municipalities to publish their notices on the ONMA website, it means the Ohio legislature passed a law that apparently requires the newspaper association to publish the state’s public notice ads without compensation.
The absurdity and potential illegality of forcing a press association to provide free services to the state demonstrates the extent to which the legislature was flying blind when it passed the bill. In a Sept. 18 email, ONMA President and Executive Director Monica Nieporte told her members the association “was never consulted about the functionality or capabilities of www.publicnoticesohio.com prior to enactment of the changes.” She also wrote the website wasn’t presently capable of accepting ads directly from customers. Moreover, most of the public notice provisions jammed into the bill had never been introduced or debated by the legislature.
Sneaking controversial, non-germane provisions into a humongous spending bill at the last minute is an opaque tactic practiced by many legislatures to bypass opposition to controversial measures. Nevertheless, Nieporte submitted testimony in June objecting to the changes. However, it isn’t clear why it took the association more than two months to inform its members about the bill, or why it still hasn’t provided them with an analysis of the legislation or a plan of action moving forward.
As far as we can tell, not a single newspaper or media outlet in the state reported on the public notice implications of HB-33 until Sept. 28, almost three months after it was signed into law. This unprecedented lack of reporting on a vital government transparency issue was presumably a result of ONMA’s silence.
Ohio is now the second state to pass a law allowing local governments to post a substantial portion of their notices on their own websites. While HB-33 is clearly less comprehensive than the bill passed last year by the Florida legislature, it contains fewer guardrails and hurdles before local governments can alter time-tested systems that provide their citizens with official notice.