When Are Public Hearings Required

A recurrent point of confusion is when must a city council or board of county commissioners hold a public hearing.  Many governing boards spend a lot of time on zoning map amendments, and those actions require a public hearing, so a notion arises that other sorts of ordinances surely require a public hearing as well.  But in fact they don’t.  Apart from ordinances involving land-use regulation, public hearings are required on only one other sort of ordinance – Sunday closing ordinances adopted by cities.  In general, apart from actions involving service districts and authorization of borrowing, statutorily-required public hearings are fairly rare.  Unless the statute that authorizes a particular sort of action requires a public hearing as a condition of acting, a board is under no compulsion to hold a hearing.  (Many boards voluntarily hold public hearings in controversial situations even though the law does not require them.)  Here’s a list of those statutes that I know of that require a city council or board of county commissioners to hold a public hearing:

If I’ve left any required hearings off the list, let me know and I’ll make the correction. 

David Lawrence is retired from the faculty of the School of Government. For questions about the subject of this blog post, please refer to our list of faculty expertise to identify the appropriate faculty member to contact.