While it probably went unnoticed last week by a majority of our state’s citizens, a battle was fought in Kentucky’s House of Representatives, with transparency and sunshine pitted against the dark side of politics. Sadly, the dark side was victorious.

The saga of this struggle unfolds as follows:

House Bill 195, introduced on the first day of the current legislative session, would allow cities and counties to run legal notices online. The Kentucky Press Association and the city and county associations negotiated a compromise that provided the legislation would only apply to counties with populations of 80,000 or more.

The compromise version of the bill was then sent to the House Local Government Committee, which approved it and sent it to the full House, which approved it as well.

But Republican Stephen Rudy of Paducah, chair of the powerful Appropriations and Revenue Committee, was upset that HB 195 was changed by agreement among the stakeholders. Rudy favors taking these public notices away from newspapers of all sizes. His vehicle for undoing the compromise by the interested parties was HB 351, a 20-page bill that pertained to tobacco and vaping. The A&R committee, under Rudy’s leadership, crafted a new version of HB 351 that ballooned to 200 pages. Nestled in this bill was language allowing cities and counties to run legal notices online. It impacted all newspapers regardless of county size.

On the House floor, Democrat Joe Graviss of Versailles made a motion to suspend the rules so he could offer an amendment to strike the substituted legal notice language from the bill. This effort was voted down almost entirely on a party line, with Republicans voting against suspending the rules while Democrats favoring suspension were joined by two Republicans.

Although this fight was lost in the House, we single out accolades for Democrat Patti Minter of Bowling Green, who spoke passionately on the House floor on two occasions about the connection between transparency and keeping legal advertising in newspapers.

What is the problem with the Republicans? Should not both sides of the political aisle desire maximum transparency in government? We believe transparency is best served by having public notices in newspapers, where they have been since the earliest days of our republic.

Previously, the Daily News has published results of an American Opinion Research poll that indicated the public, by a sizable margin, prefers to get legal notices from newspapers. It’s quite likely this result came from understanding that the newspaper’s role as a watchdog was trusted over local governments deciding for themselves what to publish, when to publish it and how to publish it. It would be easy for someone with bad intent to tuck away a notice on a website where it couldn’t be easily found.

Another strong argument for newspapers being entrusted with legal notices is that Kentucky still has many rural counties where many residents don’t have the internet or use social media, but still have their trusted weekly paper. A few of these smaller weekly papers, which operate with bare-bones profit margins, have confided in KPA that the loss of these legal notices will put them out of business. This would be a tragedy in counties where they are the primary source of news for local residents.

This could be one of the unintended consequences of Rudy’s sleight of hand. Rudy’s actions exemplify some in politics whose attitude is: Stakeholders and the public be damned because I know what’s best for you. How else do you explain his hijacking of a bill that has already completed the committee process and been passed by a majority of the House? His actions are nothing short of abuse of process and rise to the level of political malpractice.

Maybe there is no need for a full complement of legislators. Perhaps we just need a few powerful committee chairs like Rudy who know what’s best for us and whose wishes could be crafted into bills by the Legislative Research Commission and sent straight to the governor for his signature.

Kentucky has the distinction of being at or near the top compared to its sister states in a number of dubious categories, including diabetes, smoking, obesity and unfunded pension liability. Now, Kentucky potentially has the distinction of being the first state in the nation to witness a wholesale takeaway of legal advertising from newspapers.

Thank you, Rep. Rudy, for reminding citizens of Kentucky, by your actions, about the kinds of devious manipulation they most loathe about politics.

Now, the struggle over this language shifts to the Senate.

Will the dark side prevail again? We hope not, but given the facts of the House experience, we would be foolish to make any predictions.