Last month provided additional confirmation that state legislatures are increasingly looking to newspaper websites rather than government sites to supplement and perhaps eventually serve as an alternative to printed newspapers as the primary medium for public notice. Bills illustrating that trend moved closer to becoming law in both Indiana and Iowa.

Indiana

The tenor of public notice legislation has shifted in Indiana. At the start of 2023 it was one of the two or three states that seemed most likely to abandon newspapers in favor of government websites. Yesterday the legislature approved a bill that could instead serve as a gateway to an eventual migration to newspaper websites.

House Bill 1204 allows government units to bypass print newspapers by posting notices on the websites or in the e-editions of most official newspapers in the state. HB-1204 was approved in the House in late January and passed the Senate yesterday; both votes were unanimous.

The bill’s author is reportedly seeking to provide municipalities with more flexibility to publish notices on short notice, which perhaps explains why it exempts daily newspapers. HB-1204 also authorizes newspapers to charge the same rate for e-edition notices as they do for those that run in the paper, but it is silent on the subject of website-publication fees. And in a separate provision seemingly at odds with the rest of the bill, it allows political subdivisions to publish notices regarding their plans to sell certain tracts of real property on their own website in lieu of newspaper notice.

This morning the bill was returned to the House with amendments. The original version of HB-1204 approved by the House was less complicated, with fewer distinctions between different kinds of newspapers and the types of notices they can run. And it didn’t include the provision stipulating e-edition fees, or prohibitions on charging a subscription fee or requiring registration to read website or e-edition notices, that were contained in the version that passed the Senate. If the House doesn’t assent to the Senate’s changes, the differences between the bills will have to be worked out in a conference committee.

If HB-1204 is eventually signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb, Indiana will become the first state in which newspaper websites substitute for printed newspapers in the public notice process. A Louisiana statute approved last year requiring the government to publish notices on newspaper websites instead of their print editions doesn’t take effect until 2027, and statutes in North Dakota and Oregon authorizing e-editions to serve as an alternative to print newspapers don’t effect newspaper websites.

Senate Bill 252 is also on a fast track in the Hoosier State. It amends requirements for newspapers to qualify to publish notices by:

-Reducing the publication-duration mandate from three years to one
-Expanding publication jurisdiction from political subdivisions to the counties in which they are located
-Increasing average paid-circulation requirement from 200 to 500
-Extending the paid-circulation threshold of 2 percent to all counties, including counties with population above 40,000

SB-252 passed the House 95-3 yesterday after prevailing unanimously in the Senate in early February. It was returned to the Senate with amendments, including one suggested by the Hoosier State Press Association (HSPA) allowing “website page views” to count towards the paid-circulation threshold. According to HSPA Executive Director Amelia McClure, the bill originated with the owners of a new group of weekly newspapers that hope to be granted eligibility to serve as official newspapers.

Iowa

The Iowa bill was introduced by Sen. Chris Cournoyer, a Republican lawmaker who last year sponsored legislation that in its original form would have completely eliminated newspaper notice. That doomed bill passed the Senate before stalling in the House.

This year Sen. Cournoyer scaled back her ambitions with Senate File 2331. Before it was revised, SF-2331 authorized government websites to replace newspaper notice only on the fleeting occasions when a newspaper wasn’t available to do the job. Working with representatives of the Iowa Newspaper Association (INA), the senator agreed instead to support an amendment focused on requiring official newspapers to post their printed notices on their own website and on INA’s statewide site. The amendment also requires papers to heavily promote the statewide website in print and on their own websites.

“Our statewide website helped to reframe the discussion from newspapers versus the internet, to newspapers and newspaper websites versus government websites,” says new INA Executive Director Debbie Anselm.

SF-2331 passed the Senate last month by a vote of 37-9 after Sen. Cournoyer’s amendment was adopted.

The bill also requires local governments to post notices on the county website, their own website and the INA statewide site if there isn’t an official newspaper “published in the county” or if a paper “refuses to publish” a statutorily required notice. And it establishes a board to resolve disputes between government bodies and newspapers “regarding the publication of a notice”. According to Anselm, every county in Iowa presently has an official newspaper.

South Dakota

Two bills supported by the South Dakota NewsMedia Association (SDNMA) were swiftly approved by the legislature last month.

Senate Bill 75 authorizes free-circulation newspapers to qualify to publish notices if they devote sufficient coverage to “nonpaid” and original news content and maintain a minimum of 200 paid online subscribers and a print circulation of at least 500 copies. SB-75 also requires free papers to publish an annual independent audit verifying their print and online circulations, a mandate that convinced SDNMA to support the bill after it opposed similar legislation last year. It passed through both chambers without logging a single no vote and was signed into law last month by Gov. Kristi Noem.

Senate Bill 152 is also on its way to Gov. Noem’s desk after passing the Senate 31-2 and the House 64-5 in February. It automatically raises public notice rates every year by the lesser of two percent or the annual rate of inflation, replacing an annual review of fees that was supposed to be conducted by a state agency but rarely was.

Virginia

With the support of the Virginia Press Association, House Bill 264 last month passed the House 98-0 and the Senate 38-2. If Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs it, Virginia will become the first state to authorize online-only news publications to publish notice as an alternative to local newspapers. To qualify for that privilege under HB-264, local news websites must prove to a circuit court they satisfy multiple criteria, including employing local news staff, publishing exclusively online and regularly updating general news coverage of the area. They’re also required to post a home-page link to the public notice section on their website and publish each notice on VPA’s statewide website. And once their permit is granted, local news websites must petition the circuit court annually to renew their authority to publish notices.

Other States

Virginia is also one of the five states so far this year in which legislation was introduced to move many or most notices from newspapers to government websites. The Virginia bill is already dead and four similar measures in Mississippi will expire this afternoon if they aren’t reported out of committee by then. Connecticut House Bill 5173, which allows municipalities to post notices on their own websites in lieu of local newspapers, was reported favorably by a joint planning committee on Friday. Missouri’s House Bill 2328, which authorizes all notices in the state to be published on the secretary of state’s website, is scheduled to be heard in committee tomorrow.