As we reported last July, the State of Ohio, in their  Reforms Book of the Ohio State Budget for 2012-13 mentioned that they were going to build a state-wide legal notice web site. In this year's budget bill , Ohio stood up and backed up their predictions. 

As reported in the Hamilton County Law Library Blog this week, beginning this month, courts, judges, and clerks in Ohio required to publish notices multiple times, only have to publish the first notice in full in a newspaper of general interest. After that, they can post an abbreviated notice in the newspaper directing them to a state-wide web site where the notice will reside.

This little noticed bill could be the beginning of a seismic change in the requirements of publishing public notices. While Ohio has bitten off a very small piece of the pie, they have shown other states that there is a path other than through state legislators who, so frightened by the potential of the newspapers' bully pulpit (see previous posts about public notices in Florida and New Jersey ) 

According to the Hamilton Law Library Blog, the Ohio Supreme Court's staff has listed only 12 such instances. One of the 12 is foreclosures involving liens of state. The next step to save those homeowners who are being foreclosed on, would be to replicate this for private foreclosure notices. Unfortunately, the Florida legislature just blew that chance.