Trib, Wyoming Press Association prepare to ask court to shoot down Mills, Bar Nunn legal notice ordinances By Brendan LaChance on July 16, 2021
Stacks of Casper Star-Tribune newspapers sit in a storage bin. (Dan Cepeda, Oil City)
CASPER, Wyo. Attorney Bruce Moats, who represents the Casper Star-Tribune and the Wyoming Press Association, is preparing to file a petition in district court if the City of Mills and the Town of Bar Nunn’s councils don’t rescind ordinances exempting themselves from a requirement to publish legal notices in physical newspapers.
Moats on Thursday shared the petition he plans to file on behalf of the Casper Star-Tribune and the WPA that would ask the court to declare the Mills and Bar Nunn ordinances null and void since Wyoming law requires that municipalities publish legal notices in “a newspaper having general circulation in the community.”
Wyoming Senate debate letting government publishing occur online vs. in newspapers By Brendan LaChance on March 3, 2021
(Shutterstock)
CASPER, Wyo. The Wyoming Senate took up debate on Wednesday, March 3 to eliminate some requirements for government entities publishing information in local newspapers.
Senate File 17 would allow counties, towns and school districts to post minutes of meetings and salary information on their own websites rather than paying to have these published in a newspaper.
“As you can imagine, needing to pay for publishing of minutes of meetings when [those can be made] available on the public entity’s website or other locations can be quite costly,” Sen. Tara Nethercott (Laramie County) said. “We heard testimony from some of these entities that it comprises anywhere from 1% to 10% of their total budgets and can have a particular impact on the smaller communities where those margins are significantly smaller.”