Connecticut looks to update archaic legal notice postings law

Towns in Connecticut are looking to update an outdated state law requiring the posting of legal notices on printed paper. The law, which predates the Internet, costs towns and cities millions a year, money that could be better spent on public projects. According to The Hartford Courant, the state General Assembly is considering legislation that would remedy this issue and allow towns to step into the 21st century with their tax foreclosures, coastal site plans, lists of taxable personal properties and other legal notices.

The price of information
Under the current law, towns in Connecticut must post any legal notices in print newspaper, costing some towns anywhere from $16,000 to $40,000 a year. The proposed bill would allow town leadership to create web portals for these public announcements – but compromises in still enforcing that an announcement be made in print of the notice and how to access it. This would save taxpayers money and make the system more efficient overall for municipalities.

According to the news source, the bill has an amendment allowing local councils to publish their own, weekly newsletter with the announcements in them, rather than incurring costly advertising fees from existing newspapers, as an alternative.

Going paperless
The option to migrate these documents to the Internet would provide considerable savings for the cities and towns of Connecticut, and enhance the availability of the information to anyone across the state. However, in order to optimize this approach, these local governments may need to invest in document management software and other resources to support these new information databases and enhance the flow of information to the public. The best way to build such resources to make all notices, past and present, available, which would require conversion services to scan and convert older documents to digital formats as well.

Embracing these solutions will allow towns to move to the Internet quick, keep their migration costs low and optimize legal notice posting processes in a way that will remain scalable over time for future technology innovations. This way, continued growth and improvement of the solutions is viable. The right document conversion services will save leadership time and money with such projects, and ensure they continue to meet regulation compliance with notice access and availability.

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