With the announcement of Advance Local, which owns NJ Advance Media and NJ.com, dissolving The Jersey Journal; ending daily print publication of The Star Ledger, The Times of Trenton, and South Jersey Times; and ending the Hunterdon County Democrat’s weekly print edition early next year creates an immediate crisis for local governments to comply with Title 35 of Revised Statutes.
Immediate relief is required for governing bodies to meet their statutory obligation to select where public notices are published during the annual government reorganization in January.
The New Jersey State League of Municipalities, the New Jersey Association of Counties, and the New Jersey School Boards Association wrote to legislative leadership and noted that this change creates an urgent statutory compliance challenge for many New Jersey counties, municipalities, and school boards. With this announcement, a significant number of New Jersey’s counties and municipalities will be unable to comply with various statutory notification requirements.
Every year at each reorganization meeting municipalities, counties, and boards of education are required to designate an official newspaper for publishing public notices such as annual meeting schedule, bond ordinances, request for bids, sale of public property, proposed and adopted ordinances, zoning changes, just to name a few and respectfully request that Title 35 of Revised Statutes be supplemented with the following language, in part, as well as amendments made to various sections of the statutory law that would permit local governing bodies to “to electronically publish legal notices on a newspaper’s website or in a newspaper’s digital publication.”
The League passed League Conference Resolution 2017-10 advocating for amending the various statutes so local governments can comply with the law, and NJAC Resolution to Support Online Legal Notices, which was adopted earlier this year and has been passed by 12 counties.
We encourage you to reach out to your Senator and Assemblymembers and urge revisions to Title 35 so local governments remain compliant with Public Notice laws.
Contact: Paul Penna, Senior Legislative Analyst, ppenna@njlm.org, 609-695-3481, x110.