Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed three bills last month that will impact the state’s public notice laws. When it takes effect on July 1, the most significant bill will make Indiana the first state to authorize government units to publish primary notice on some newspaper websites or e-editions.

House Bill 1204, which passed both the House and Senate unanimously, allows local governments and state agencies to circumvent the print editions of most newspapers by posting notices in one of their digital products as an alternative. However, the bill only applies to newspapers that distribute fewer than four editions per week; print will remain the exclusive means for government notice in papers that are published more frequently.

HB-1204’s first-term sponsor, Rep. Jennifer Meltzer (R-Shelbyville), said at a February committee hearing she designed the bill to allow government units to avoid delays resulting from newspapers that require ads to be submitted up to two weeks in advance of their publication. A lobbyist representing Indiana’s municipalities thanked Rep. Meltzer and called the legislation a “step toward modernizing how public notice is made.” The Hoosier State Press Association (HSPA) also testified in support of the measure.

HB-1204 authorizes papers to charge the same rate for e-edition notices as they do for those that run in print. However, it is silent on the issue of website publication fees, leaving open the question of how much newspapers can charge for notices posted on their websites under the new law. Like many other states, Indiana has a statute requiring newspapers to post notices on their website free of charge to supplement the notices paid for and published in their print editions, but that provision won’t apply when the original notice is published online under HB-1204.

The bill also incentivizes weekly or twice-weekly papers in Indiana that don’t have an e-edition or website to get one since it allows government units to publish notices on their own website if the local weekly doesn’t have a digital platform to post them on.

Most government notices in Indiana are required to be published in two different newspapers if there are two papers qualified to publish them within a particular jurisdiction — a remnant of an earlier era when newspapers were openly partisan and local governments in some states were required to pick official newspapers representing each major party. However, in 2021 the legislature amended statutes requiring the successive publication of notices, authorizing government agencies to post all but the first two initial notices on their own websites.

On the same day he approved HB-1204, Gov. Holcomb also signed a bill liberalizing requirements for newspapers to qualify to publish notices. Pursued by the owners of a new group of weekly newspapers in Indiana, Senate Bill 252 reduces the state’s continuous-publication mandate from three years to one year while expanding the publication jurisdiction from local subdivisions (e.g., cities or towns) to the counties in which they are located. SB-252 also increases the average-paid-circulation requirement from 200 to 500 but it includes an HSPA-backed provision allowing papers to include website page views in the count.

The Indiana legislature moved in a different direction on Senate Bill 206, which allows the state’s EPA-affiliated environmental agency to publish most of its notices via “electronic means” as an alternative to printed newspapers. Indiana’s Department of Environmental Management had been taking steps to move the agency’s notices from newspapers to its own website for at least six years when Gov. Holcomb signed SB-206 into law last month.

Aside from the bills enacted in Indiana, March was a slow month for public notice legislation. Nevertheless, new bills authorizing notices to be published on government websites were introduced in Pennsylvania and Louisiana. In Pennsylvania, House Bill 2103 would allow government units to publish notices on their own website, a newspaper website or a TMC publication, in lieu of the print version of a local newspaper. HB-2103 largely mirrors Senate legislation introduced in Pennsylvania in 2023 that is still stuck in the same committee it was assigned to 14 months ago.

House Bill 680 in Louisiana would allow local governments and the courts to post notices on the clerk of court’s website in each parish and would authorize state agencies to replace newspapers by posting notices on the secretary of state’s website. It would also allow the clerks of court and secretary of state to charge fees for publishing the notices. However, HB-680 wouldn’t eliminate the statute enacted last year that is scheduled to move notices in Louisiana to newspaper websites in 2027, so it’s not clear what its ultimate impact would be if it passed. It was originally set for a hearing on April 4 but the hearing appears to have been removed from the committee’s schedule this morning.