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In VA, if you want an alcohol license for your restaurant, you are required to print an ad in a local newspaper stating that you intend to get a license. I'm guessing it's so some prohibitionist can call up the ABC and complain? It's completely ridiculous. I wondering what will happen when print newspaper ceases to exist.

I've noticed a lot of "public notice" laws. Either a physical sign on the property or something published in the newspaper. I'm not quite sure what the digital equivalent would be--a government run "announce" page that gets indexed and archived? Not really much different from press releases governments and businesses already do required by other laws.

I do see the value in publicly announcing things, but I do see newspapers as archaic.

Most modern states just post a sign over the door prior to opening that X company seeks Y license and this location.

Yeah, that works for changes at a physical location. What about founding of an LLC or other less tangible changes? Even with a physical sign it would be nice to have a searchable long term record. That seems to be what newspapers fulfilled; public broadcast and a reasonable long-term archive.

Around here the Company Court (which decides that a company formation was lawful and registers the company) has a journal/gazette, and that's the official record. Nowadays it's of course fully on-line. And lawyers (who submit the paperwork of the new company) do it exclusively on-line (they basically upload a signed ZIP of the scanned pages and an XML)!

The clerks at this court look at the scanned pages and confirm that yes they do say what the XML says, and then this gets published.

People can search for company histories, look at their bylaws, etc.

Similarly there's a different gov service for publishing corporate yearly financial reports.

Why isn't something like that for US states?

In Palo Alto we would receive notices in our mailbox whenever a local business was applying for a liquor license.

I think this is fairly common.

Don't forget about the publication certificate fee too:

> After you get done publishing, the newspaper will provide an Affidavit of Publication, and you send that to the New York Division of Corporations with a Certificate of Publication that carries a $50 filing fee.

I live in NY but never filed an LLC, but I Google'd that. I can't believe such nonsense exists to get money in a state that already has high state / sales taxes.

Don’t falter that easy. If the law is stated so clearly, then start 3 more LLC’s and offer the news posting service for $10 in your new publications that only publish new LLC’s.

There’s a ton of this little silly companies delegated by government. It’s akin to lobbying in a way. They depend on inefficiencies.

Best argument I’ve heard is “gotta keep people employed somehow, can’t be too efficient”

Ah, this.

1. Please ignore almost all the mail you get initially. There are public companies that troll NYS business registration logs and send TONS of false and highly misleading if not illegal advertisements. "You totally need this $900 OSHA poster you can just print for free and paste on the wall". "Ignore the fact we copied NYS' letterhead but aren't a governemnt entity", etc.

2. The NYS tax department will send you one real piece of mail as a questionnaire.

3. Yes, the newspaper requirement is real and fucking terrible. It's a very old holdover however politicians don't want to get rid of it because quite literally, it's a handout program for newspapers. It would make alot of "local" papers nobody reads, close up shops.

4. Shop around, there are a few ways to save money on it. Honestly, I made a LLC 2 years ago in NYS and haven't even used it business wise. I have yet to do the publicatinon requirement. You just can't legally do business until you do so BUT it doesn't give a deadline.

In the UK, if you want to close a company you must do the same (pay ~£300 to post notice in a paper that your company is closing).

I think the idea is that anyone who the company owes money to can file a claim before any remaining funds are distributed.

Of course there are much better and more cost-effective ways of doing this (even pre-internet). It’s just absurd rent-seeking by unproductive leeches on the economy as far as I can tell.

It's not a notice in just a paper. It's a notice in the paper of public record. Which in the UK is the London Gazette, that you are almost certainly never going to see in a newsagents. There are laws requiring notices in that publication, and IIRC it's still government owned.

They publish notice of all laws, all insolvencies, all changes of name, new holder of certain public offices etc. I don't think there is any news or anything beyond the UK.

I bet it would be 5x more if you had to take out an ad in the Times or Telegraph. :)

Every episode of “Nathan for You” is amazing. The episode about this phenomenon is no exception. “The Diarrhea Times”...lol

Link to a preview of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU1U2Eyep_4

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but why can't you just call up the newspapers directly and list whatever it is that the law requires?

The newspapers will charge you to run the ad. They have no reason to print that info for free.

Of course, but surely that aren't going to charge you anywhere near $1000.

”unless I pay them $1000 to publish the name of my LLC in two public newspapers for six weeks, one daily newspaper and one weekly newspaper”

Reading that as “one daily newspaper and one weekly newspaper”, that would be 6 (weeks) times at least (6 + 1) = 42 adverts in a newspaper (I can also read it as “2 public, one daily and one weekly”. That would increase the number of adverts). Price per advert would be about $25.

I guess most LLCs get incorporated in an at least somewhat large city, so the circulation of the paper will be somewhat high. $25 per advert then doesn’t sound that bad to me.

I know zilch of advertising prices, though, so let’s google it. Reading https://fitsmallbusiness.com/newspaper-advertising-costs/ (a link that google gave me, but that I don’t know the quality of), I see the price per “column inch” go down from about €18 to about €13 when you advertise more often.

⇒ it could well be that $1,000 is a fair price, giving the higher price you would have to pay and the amount of work you would have to do if you did it alone.

(Still seems a weird law, though. I can imagine that one should give people to object if your company will be noisy, stinky, or the like, but then, the city, IMO, should require a permit)

I think the law made sense in the past so that the formation of a company would be well-known and not a secret. Now that everything is available online, less so. That the publication servicing companies know you exist, advertise directly to you because of that, and need no other information than your payment to do the publication is proof that the law is no longer useful.

I think part of it is the assumption that affected citizens (who might object to the new shop/cafe/…) are more likely to read such papers than government publications.

That likely still is true, but less so (fewer people subscribe to papers), and the assumption that people who read the paper would spot your advert probably only held back in the time when papers had reasonably small coverage (so that your advert wouldn’t appear in a large section of the paper, but stand on its own), and were about the only source of news (which made them much better read)

You can do it cheaper through a publication company, because they've already negotiated rates with the publishers. Though $1000 seems excessive. In Westchester County, I paid $300. There is a large spread in fees that will be charged.

I wrote to my state assembly person; she wrote back saying A8125 was introduced to repeal the requirement, but no action taken. I would encourage you to write to your assembly person and senator, because this is just a drag on NY businesses.

2017-2018 A8125 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2017/a8125

Unfortunately the numbers are year specific.

I wonder how many laws/rules there are, that made sense long time ago but not anymore, or those that never made sense to begin with.

Running for office on a platform of "removing useless laws" has been a dream of mine since childhood.