Key Points: Steve Key, executive director and general counsel, Hoosier State Press Association
With the conclusion of the 2021 session of the Indiana General Assembly, this is what I’ve learned:
The statutory line connecting public notices to newspapers is extremely frayed. The legislature very nearly cut the tie completely with H.B. 1498 earlier in the session and sawed away at it with the passage of S.B. 332 on April 20.
H.B. 1498 would have allowed all public notices to be moved to government websites. S.B. 332 will allow government units to move the second or third notices of multi-run public notices to “official websites.”
H.B. 1498 was barely defeated in the House when it failed by lack of a constitutional majority, 46-44. S.B. 332 just reached that threshold with a 51-40 vote. (The Senate easily passed S.B. 332 with a 35-14 vote.)
The 2021 session confirms to me that the HSPA Board of Directors made the right decision to pledge to legislative leadership in all four caucuses that we would present a comprehensive public notice plan to modernize public notice policy in Indiana.
The 2022 session will answer the question as to what value does the majority of legislators give to legal due process, government accountability, and local journalism.
They’ll either maintain the four elements of effective public notice – accessibility, verification, archivability, and an independent party to publish/post the notices – or they’ll move them to government websites and let the foxes guard the henhouse.
The 2021 session confirms to me that the HSPA Board of Directors made the right decision to pledge to legislative leadership in all four caucuses that we would present a comprehensive public notice plan to modernize public notice policy in Indiana.
HSPA’s task will not be an easy one when it comes to updating a system that has served Indiana well even before it became a state. Territorial governor William Henry Harrison offered a $500 bounty for a publisher to start a newspaper in Vincennes so that he would have a place to publish public notices of the government. Elihu Stout loaded a press on a boat and then ox cart for the trip to Vincennes to collect that bounty. Today’s Vincennes Sun-Commercial traces its heritage to that first Indiana newspaper.
Moving from a print-centric notice to digital raises a multitude of questions that HSPA will need to answer:
• What journalistic entities should be eligible to carry public notices and how to you statutorily define them?
• What threshold should be met as to Internet reach (speed and households connected) before notices should move from a print requirement to a digital format?
• What’s a fair pricing system for the placement of public notices on a qualifying journalistic entity’s website?
• How do you verify the continuous posting of a public notice on a website to satisfy the Indiana Supreme Court that due process was afforded?
• What system should the Indiana State Library employ to archive digital news sites?
HSPA’s Board of Directors will keep you posted on this 2022 legislative proposal as answers to the above questions are reached. The answers must reflect a policy that helps Hoosiers access information that the General Assembly over decades has determined is so important that it requires government units or private individuals or entities to publish notice.
That’s been a traditional strength of local newspapers. They’re easily accessible and Hoosiers expect to find those public notices in the newspaper. Indiana newspapers are seeing greater readership then ever when you combine print and digital reach as people turn to their local newspapers to find out how COVID-19 is impacting their communities.
Families don’t desire to search multiple government websites to learn what their elected officials are doing or contemplating that will impact their children’s schools, development near their homes or other ways their tax dollars will be spent.
If you have ideas on what a digital public notice landscape should look like in Indiana, feel free to share with me via email at skey@hspa.com.
