Press
What a reporter needs to cite CityRuleLookup and to reach the person who runs it.
Who runs the site
Martyn O'Neill, Founder & Editor
Founder of CityRuleLookup. Product manager with 10+ years building and verifying information systems at scale.
His full biography and profiles are on the About page.
About the site
CityRuleLookup publishes plain-English summaries of local ordinances for cities and counties in the United States, with statewide pages where a state law governs instead of a local one. Each ordinance page shows the summary beside an excerpt of the legal text, the section citation, a link to the source the excerpt was read on, and the date the page was last written, edited or re-checked by software. The site is run by one person,Martyn O'Neill, its founder and editor. Pages are compiled by software with AI assistance, and the editor does not read each one before it is published. The site is independent and funded by advertising. It is not a government website or a law firm, and nothing on it is legal advice.
The editorial process page sets out what software does and what the editor does.
Fact sheet
- Ordinance pages
- 140,000+
- Cities
- 900+
- Counties
- 500+
- States, counting DC
- 51
- Categories
- 60
- Topics
- 349
Every ordinance page carries an excerpt of the legal text, its section citation and a link to the source. Page, city and county counts are read from the site’s database when this page is built and are rounded down, so a figure with a plus sign is a floor. States, categories and topics are those with at least one rule page the site serves, as counted on . The exact counts on that date, state by state, are on the methodology page.
Data and studies
Each table covers only the codes on this site, not every code in the country, so none of them is a national estimate. All of them are on the data page, and the methodology page says how they are built.
- When quiet hours start in local noise codes
Among the 109 local codes listed in this table, 69 (63 percent) start the nightly period for noise in general at 10 p.m.
- How long local codes give to clear snow from the sidewalk
Among the 237 local codes on this site whose quoted text states a sidewalk snow deadline, 220 give a number of hours and 17 give a time of day.
- Holidays with no trash collection, by city and county
Among the 30 holiday pickup rules on this site whose quoted text lists the no-collection holidays in a form the builder reads, Christmas Day is on all 30, Thanksgiving on 27 and New Year's Day on 25.
- Who publishes local law
Municode came first in 636 of the 1,316 cities and counties counted (48%): more of the pages counted for each of those places link to it than to any other publisher.
How to cite
Cite the law first, then where you read it. Each ordinance page links to the source its excerpt was read on. That link is the address stored with the page. It often opens the front page of the code, and it can open a different part of the code, so use the section citation to find the passage, and check the rule there before you publish. On a small share of older pages the link goes to a source that is not on the site’s list of allowed sources. The editorial process page says how many. For an ordinance page:
[Place], [section citation shown on the page], via CityRuleLookup, [page URL], read [date].
For a data table:
CityRuleLookup, “[table title]”, [table URL], read [date]. CC BY 4.0.
Reuse
- The text of the laws quoted on the site is public law.
- Study tables and data files are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Credit CityRuleLookup in any reasonable form. A link is welcome and may carry
rel="nofollow". - The plain-English summaries are all rights reserved. Brief quotation with credit is fine.
Summaries and excerpts are not available for bulk reuse under that license. Commercial licensing is by agreement, through the API and data licensing page. The Terms of Service say the same.
Contact
Write to contact@cityrulelookup.com. The editor answers press mail himself. There is no press office and no fixed turnaround. If you need a state or metro cut of any data table, ask for it.
