HB576 Alabama 2019 Session

Summary

Primary Sponsor

Andrew Sorrell Auditor

Republican

Session

Regular Session 2019

Title

Public notices and legal notices, to provide for electronic publication through state-sanctioned public notice website, Legal Notice Savings and Modernization Act, Secs. 6-8-64, 17-4-1 am'd.

Description

Under existing law, various public notices are required to be published in newspapers.

This bill would require the Secretary of State to create, maintain, host, and operate a website on which public notices may be published with legal effect.

This bill would require that the public notice website be available free of charge at all times and that both current and archived public notices be searchable by keyword, file number, or area, and that public notices of local legislation, both current and archived, be publicly searchable by keyword, by sponsor, by subject matter, and by county.

This bill would allow the Secretary of State to require the person or entity purporting to provide the notice to pay a reasonable fee which reflects the actual cost of publication. There would be no fee charged for any other usage of the public notice website.

This bill would also provide a method by which a county commission may vote to opt that county out of the public notice website, as well as a method by which the governing body of a municipality may vote to opt its area of incorporation out of the public notice website.

This bill would also provide for delivery of public notices to the Secretary of State for publishing on the public notice website.

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Subjects

Notice, Legal