House endorses bill that enhances public notices

After unanimous approval in committee last week, a bill that enhances the reach of public notices sailed through the S.D. House of Representatives on Monday. 

HB1075 requires all newspapers to post public notices to a website, sdpublicnotices.com, maintained by the S.D. Newspaper Association. The bill also requires newspapers maintain a prominent link to the site on their websites or provide a link to the public notices it publishes that is accessible and free to the public. The legislation allows e-editions of newspapers to count toward the frequency of publication required by some notices and sets a minimum of eight hours per week that a newspaper office must be open. The cost disclaimer found at the end of each public notice must include information that the notice can be accessed on the newspaper association’s statewide website. 

“This bill represents a proactive step by the state’s newspaper industry to modernize and enhance the reach of public notices published first and foremost in newspapers,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tim Reed, R-Brookings.

Reed told the members of the House that newspaper publication of public notices is a recurring topic of discussion in the House Local Government Committee where the bill received its unanimous endorsement. 

“Continually people have said yes, we still want them printed in the hard copy,” Reed said. 

Rep. Will Mortenson, R-Pierre, asked Reed if the portion of the bill that allows e-editions to count toward the frequency of publication that some notices require would mean that a five-day-a-week electronic newsletter would now qualify as a legal newspaper. 

“You still have to have a postal permit to be a legal newspaper,” Reed explained.

In what was likely a reference to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader moving the printing of the newspaper to Iowa, Rep. Randy Gross, R-Elkton, asked Reed, “Was any consideration given to what a state newspaper should be? Should it be published and printed in the state?”

Reed said the Legislature doesn’t make rules about where the state’s businesses can do business. 

“I don’t think it’s fair that we force a paper to do a certain part of their business in or out of state,” Reed said. “I don’t think we do that for other businesses in the state.”

The bill passed through the House on a vote of 69-1 and will next be heard in a Senate committee. 

When the bill was heard last week in the House Local Government Committee, there was no testimony in opposition to the bill. Yvonne Taylor, a lobbyist for the S.D. Municipal League, offered “neutral” testimony about the legislation. Neutral testimony is a new category being tried out this year to go along with traditional proponent and opponent testimony. 

Taylor drew the committee’s attention to a statewide website that started recently for city, school and county meeting material. 

“It’s a statewide website that will be hosted by the state of South Dakota for all local government meeting materials,” Taylor said, explaining that there would be a link to the website on the state’s home page. 

Taylor, whose organization has, in the past, lobbied for public notices to be moved out of newspapers and on to local government websites told the committee: “You can take that and apply it to this bill neutrally all you want.”

Dave Bordewyk, executive director of the S.D. Newspaper Association, said the site hosted by his organization would require the posting of any public notice required by law to be printed in a legal newspaper. 

 “This bill is about our industry being proactive and working to bring you a solution that will work well for the future of our state’s newspapers and, more importantly, for ensuring our local citizens are informed about what local entities are doing and how they are spending taxpayer dollars,” Bordewyk said. 

Bordewyk welcomed a state public notice website as a means for getting information to as many people as possible, but cautioned the committee about any attempt to make that the only online access to that information. 

“Newspapers and their websites are in a much better position to reach a much wider, populous audience than a government website,” Bordewyk said. “Newspaper websites garner much more Web traffic than government websites any day.”

Sioux Falls attorney Justin Smith, a lobbyist for the newspaper association, noted the many attempts through the years to move public notices out of newspapers and on to the Web. 

“The prayers of the tech savvy, cutting edge public bodies have been answered,” Smith said, “and we are coming into the Internet age.”

According to Smith, newspapers play a vital role in making sure that public notices are published with integrity. He also noted that for government entities, posting to the proposed state website is currently voluntary, while HB1075 would make it mandatory for newspapers to post to the association’s site.

“In South Dakota, we understand that government should not be the arbiter of its own accountability and that there must be third party oversight,” Smith said. 

Rep. Will Mortenson, R-Pierre, asked about the future of newspapers. 

“One nice thing about state government is that it has a permanence that no private entity has,” Mortenson said. “What happens to all our public notices if no entity exists that represents a majority of the newspapers in the state?”

Bordewyk acknowledged that times are changing for newspapers but said that his organization has been in existence since 1882 and newspapers pre-date statehood. 

“This bill is a recognition of what’s happening within the industry and within the realm of commerce,” Bordewyk said.