Announcing Meetings
Most jurisdictions require public meetings to be announced a minimum number of hours in advance. Livy tracks these requirements and warns when deadlines are at risk.
Under your state's open-meetings law (Brown Act, TOMA, Sunshine Law, etc.) this is called "public notice" or "noticing." Livy uses announce / announcement in the UI for clarity; settings labels use "noticing" to match the statutory language clerks search for.
How Deadlines Work
When publishing an agenda:
- The meeting's scheduled start time
- Minus the required notice hours (regular or special, depending on meeting type)
- Compared against the current time
Past the deadline? You'll see a warning. You can still publish by overriding the compliance check.
Overriding means publishing an agenda that may not meet your jurisdiction's legal requirements. The override is recorded in the audit log. Use only when justified — e.g., an emergency meeting authorized by your jurisdiction's rules.
Special Meetings
Marked-special meetings use the shorter Special meeting notice value. They typically have stricter rules — only items listed on the agenda may be discussed.
What Gets Checked
The compliance check runs at agenda publish time, not at announcement. Announcing alone doesn't trigger a check because no agenda content is being released yet.
Configuration
Configure under Settings → General → Public Notice Requirements:
- Regular meeting notice (hours) — required notice for regular meetings. Most US sunshine laws use 72.
- Special meeting notice (hours) — required notice for special meetings. The Brown Act and Florida Sunshine Law use 24; the Texas Open Meetings Act uses 2.
- Compliance label (optional) — free-text legal citation (e.g. "California Brown Act §54954.2") shown in the publish dialog and emails.
Related
- Meetings — how the announcement is recorded and what becomes public
- Agendas — the publish action where the compliance check runs
- Audit Logging — overrides are recorded for accountability