Here is a brief legal notice legislative roundup:

Connecticut Newspapers have begun a concerted lobbying effort to fight a bill being considered by the Connecticut House of Representatives that would give towns the abilities to post public notices on their own websites, reports the Associated Press.

The State House in Arizona advanced HB 2533 which would allow local governments to post legal notices on their own websites reported the Tucson Sentinel. The planned bill passed 31-27 on reconsideration on Monday, March 17 after failing on the previous Thursday.

We've been covering legal notice bills for over 2 years and thought we've seen every possible bill proposed. The State Senate of Tennessee further wasted legislators' time and taxpayers' money by approving Senate Bill 461, sponsored by State Senator Ken Yager which changes absolutely nothing. There are no savings for the cash-strapped municipalities because the newspapers continue to charge outrageous rates for print notices in newspapers with dwindling circulations.

HB 1136 which would allow municipalities to publish legal notices on their own web sites was proposed Feb. 8 and was discussed in a hearing February 28. The bill, by our estimations, could save aggregately $6-$9 million every year. If privately funded notices like foreclosure notices, name changes, litigation and licenses were allowed to be published online, savings would increase to almost $20 million.

"There has been a steady Celine in newspaper readership in the past several decades while at the same time there has been a significant increase in ... access to the internet"

The bill explicitly supports much of what we've been saying:

Online Legal Notice Legislation season is well under way as bills are being proposed in several states. (Texas, Michigan, Tennessee, Wyoming, Arizona) and have been shot down in two (Virginia, Indiana) .

One state is showing some creativity in proposing online notice bills.

A bill, that would potentially decrease costs for local governmental agencies, raised in Indiana's state senate was never  voted on by the Senate's Local Government Committee and died last week.

 It seems that our elected officials are as oblivious to their surroundings as they are persistent. In the past 18 months, over 20 bills proposed in various states moving public notices to government web sites have failed to pass. The newspapers' valid argument in opposing these bills has been that the independence, required when a non-partisan third party (like a newspaper) commissioned to publish notices, is absent when the government controls the message and the delivery of that message.

An obsolete statewide Ohio law mandating legal notices in print might change with a new bill  which would allow storage facilities to advertise the sale of abandoned property online.