Effective: September 15, 2014
Latest Legislation: House Bill 483 - 130th General Assembly
(A) An Ohio trade association that represents the majority of newspapers of general circulation as defined in section 7.12 of the Revised Code shall operate and maintain the official public notice web site.
Not later than one hundred eighty days after the effective date of this section, in all cases in which a notice or advertisement is required by a section of the Revised Code or an administrative rule to be published in a newspaper of general circulation, or in a daily law journal as required by section 2701.09 of the Revised Code, the notice or advertisement also shall be posted on the official public notice web site by the publisher of the newspaper or journal.
The operator of the official public notice web site shall:
(1) Use a domain name for the web site that will be easily recognizable and remembered by and understandable to users of the web site;
(2) Maintain the web site on the internet so that it is fully accessible to and searchable by members of the public at all times, other than during maintenance or acts of God outside the operator's control;
(3) Not charge a fee to a person that accesses the web site to view notices or advertisements or to perform searches of the web site, provided that the operator may charge a fee for enhanced search and customized content delivery features;
(4) Not charge a fee to a state agency or political subdivision for publishing a notice or advertisement on the web site;
(5) Ensure that notices and advertisements displayed on the web site conform to the requirements that would apply to the notices and advertisements if they were being published in a newspaper, as directed in section 7.16 of the Revised Code or in the relevant provision of the statute or rule that requires the notice;
(6) Ensure that notices and advertisements continue to be displayed on the web site for not less than the length of time required by the relevant provision of the statute or rule that requires the notice or advertisement;
(7) Maintain an archive of notices and advertisements that no longer are displayed on the web site;
(8) Enable notices and advertisements, both those currently displayed and those archived, to be accessed by key word, by party name, by case number, by county, and by other useful identifiers;
(9) Maintain adequate systemic security and backup features, and develop and maintain a contingency plan for coping with and recovering from power outages, systemic failures, and other unforeseeable difficulties;
(10) Provide access to the web site to the publisher of any Ohio newspaper or daily law journal that qualifies under the Revised Code to publish notices and advertisements, for the posting of notices and advertisements at no cost, or for a reasonable, uniform fee for the service; and
(11) Provide, if requested, a regularly scheduled feed or similar data transfer to the department of administrative services of notices and advertisements posted on the web site, provided that the operator of the web site shall not be required to provide the feed or transfer more often than once every business day.
(B) An error in a notice or advertisement posted on the official public notice web site, or a temporary web site outage or service interruption preventing the posting or display of a notice or advertisement on that web site, does not constitute a defect in making legal publication of the notice or advertisement, and publication requirements shall be considered met if the notice or advertisement published in the newspaper or daily law journal is correct.
(C) The official public notice web site shall not contain any political publications or political advertising described in division (A)(1)(a), (b), or (c) of section 3517.20 of the Revised Code.
(D) The publisher of a newspaper of general circulation or of a daily law journal that maintains a web site shall include on its web site a link to the official public notice web site.