The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a bill Monday that would temporarily allow public bodies to publish public notices in news outlets in a digital-only format.

Local governments have been contending with a looming public notice crisis since The Star-Ledger announced in October it would print its last physical copy on Feb. 2. The bill provides a temporary fix for those agencies and entities subject to laws such as the Open Public Meetings Act, which required public notices to appear in the print edition of a newspaper. The temporary measure will allow those public notices to run in outlets with online editions through March 1, as long as that outlet is an official publication.