How new Texas law modernizes and protects newspaper notices

Analysis By MIKE HODGES and DONNIS BAGGETT, Texas Press Association

It’s a new day for public notices in Texas. And Texas newspapers remain central to the process — just as they have since the days of Sam Houston.

The 2023 Legislature brought yet another swarm of frontal assaults on public notices in newspapers, but after a series of contentious hearings each of those bills came to an inglorious end in the Capitol landfill. Meanwhile, two of Texas’ strongest voices for government accountability were crafting a bill to modernize requirements for public notices while enhancing newspapers’ role in the process.

SB 943 by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, and Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, was signed into law by Gov. Gregg Abbott on May 27. The new law, which goes into effect Sept. 1, maintains the longstanding requirement for paid notices to be printed in a general circulation newspaper, but also requires the newspaper — at no additional cost — to publish the notices online outside its paywall and to place them on TPA’s free, interactive statewide public notice site.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously and drew only one opposition vote in the House. After more than a decade of legislative hearings in which critics waved their cellphones above their heads and proclaimed that nobody reads newspapers anymore, it was a stunning turn of events.

Like most successful legislation, SB 943 was a long time coming.

“We’ve worked hard to get here on this issue,” TPA President Ken Esten Cooke said after the smoke cleared. “We had two primary goals: to protect newspapers’ historic and important roles in the public notice process, and to modernize the way we do so by enhancing our digital products and distribution. It’s gratifying to see that hard work pay off.”

For years, staff and volunteer members on TPA’s Legislative Advisory Committee picked the brains of our members for ways to protect and improve newspaper notice. Along the way we built a coalition of associations from across the political spectrum with a passion for government transparency. We worked constantly to grow relationships with government accountability champions from both political parties in the House and Senate. Then we rebuilt our statewide aggregate website, www.texaspublicnotices.com, partnering with a world-class digital platform provider with deep newspaper roots and the industry-standard public notice software. With our members’ participation, we launched a new, vastly more robust version of the website in late 2022.

As the Legislature got under way, TPA commissioned a  market survey of 1,000 Texans to see where newspapers stand with citizens. The results showed clearly that Texans not only still read public notices in newspapers — both in print and digitally — but believe newspapers should remain the legally required home for notices. (For an in-depth look at the survey, go to www.texaspress.com/surveys.)

One of the most crucial steps was getting lawmakers with credibility, seniority and influence to carry a bill for us. Both Sen. Kolkhorst and Rep. Hunter fit that description, and we were honored and delighted that they agreed to carry our bill.

The bill was only 418 words long — tiny by legislative standards. But by modernizing the way newspapers are required to disseminate notices and by making a robust TPA website the official state repository for notices, Sen. Kolkhorst and Rep. Hunter preserved newspapers’ all-important third-party watchdog function and archival credibility while enhancing the visibility and utility of notices. Good government won, the taxpayers won and newspapers won.

“SB 943 is an important tool for Texans to gather critical information and adds to transparency for better accountability of their local governments and communities,” Kolkhorst said.”The legislation expands access to important public notices, while maintaining vital journalism throughout Texas.”

Hunter agreed that the legislation was important to the future of Texas newspapers.

“Our local newspapers are important resources of information for communities across Texas,” he said. “Our new legislation will allow the publishing of legal notice information on the newspapers’ websites and be published in a database maintained by Texas Press Association. Great transparency and public access accomplished.”

Texas newspapers may rightly celebrate this victory, but we can’t assume the war is over. The legislature meets every other year plus special sessions, and other anti-newspaper bills will undoubtedly be filed. But thanks to SB 943 — and to our members’ willingness to adopt the new requirements  — we’re in a stronger position than we’ve been in since the internet was invented.

“Our critics won’t go away, you can count on that,” said veteran LAC chair Bill Patterson, publisher of the Denton Record Chronicle. “One of the things newspapers do best is hold public officials accountable, so some are always looking for weaknesses they can exploit to attack us. Public notice in Texas just got a whole lot stronger, and so did Texas newspapers. Now we need to build on that strength and be prepared to defend our hard-won ground.”

By the way, we mentioned Sam Houston earlier. That’s because in 1849 he placed a front-page public notice in the first edition of Texas’ oldest continuously operating newspaper, The Daily News in Galveston.