New York municipalities required to use “.gov” website domain by year-end

Legislation passed early this year amends New York general municipal law and requires that all municipal websites use a “.gov” domain name. The change, which goes into effect on Dec. 21, 2025, also requires that all municipalities with a population of 1,500 or more establish and maintain an official website. The website must be updated regularly and be accessible to the public. Websites must contain basic municipal information such as hours of operation, privacy policy information, financial documents such as the current year budget, public notices, agendas and minutes required by the Open Meetings Law, and legal and regulatory documents.

“We don’t believe it’s overly egregious,” New York Association of Towns (NYAOT) Executive Director Christopher Koetzle says of the legislation, which the NYAOT helped negotiate. Websites are useful tools for municipalities to easily convey information to residents, he notes. Having a “.gov” domain will make those websites more secure and add a layer of authenticity, he adds. With municipalities currently having anything from a “.com” to a “.org” to a “.gov,” requiring all municipalities to use “.gov” adds uniformity. “It’s just easier for the residents to know it’s a ‘.gov’,” Koetzle says.

Switching a “.gov” domain provides some extra security for municipalities, Brandon Brooks, data center manager at M.A. Polce, a Rome–based cybersecurity and IT services firm, says. “Anyone can buy a “.com” for pretty cheap,” he says, and there isn’t any background checking going on. That’s not the case with a “.gov” domain, which is issued through a federal registry through the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). “They check your eligibility,” Brooks says. “They really go through a thorough verification process to make sure you’re eligible.” That thorough vetting process helps ensure entities’ website domains are not “stolen,” he notes. Since domain names have to be renewed regularly, they can become eligible again if an entity somehow misses their renewal period. That means a municipality using a “.com” domain could lose access to that domain if it misses the renewal period for some reason, says Brooks. That opens the door for bad actors to obtain the domain. The entity would either have to give in to the bad actor’s demands to regain the domain or switch to a new domain name and start its website all over again. However, the vetting process for the “.gov” domain helps prevent hostile domain takeovers. “There’s definitely a tightened layer of security,” Brooks says. The process of obtaining a “.gov” domain can be a little lengthy but isn’t inherently difficult. Brooks suggests municipalities that have to make the switch create a plan to manage the process smoothly. “There are a lot of moving parts to it,” he says, but about 90 percent of the changes happen “behind the scenes.” Towns can acquire a “.gov” domain name, at no cost, through the GSA at: https://get.gov/domains/. To let residents know of the website address change, municipalities can post a banner on the current website homepage notifying them, Brooks says. Once the change is made, municipalities can redirect residents from the old website to the new one for a period of time as well. “There are a few different ways to ease people into it,” Brooks says. Onondaga County has used a “.com” domain but is already in the process of migrating over a large portion of the county’s website to “.gov,” Justin Sayles, the county’s executive communications director, tells CNYBJ.