For more than a decade, N.C. lawmakers have tried to pass legislation that would allow local governments to move legal and public notices out of newspapers. Those notices often contain vital information — a zoning change in your neighborhood, an important public meeting — and they are required to appear in newspapers because more people will see them there.

That’s part of the reason such bills have failed in North Carolina, with a notable exception: In 2017, lawmakers changed public notice requirements in Guilford County in a local bill that Gov. Roy Cooper couldn’t veto. Now Republicans want to do the same for dozens more counties using a sneaky legislative maneuver.

As the News & Observer’s Colin Campbell reports, House Bill 35, sponsored by Rep. Harry Warren, R-Rowan, would allow 14 counties that stretch from Swain in the west to Currituck on the coast to put legal and public notices on their websites instead of in newspapers. House Bill 51, sponsored by Rep. Howard Penny, R-Harnett, would do the same for a dozen eastern counties.

By splitting the counties, each bill is considered a local bill — affecting fewer than 15 counties — and therefore not subject to the governor’s veto under North Carolina law. But if you’re accomplishing the same larger purpose in two separate measures, they’re not really local bills. Legislators know it, and they should stop trying to skirt the law.

It’s also bad for the people they serve. The bills, which are scheduled to appear before a House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, would affect two types of notice requirements. Ads notifying residents about public hearings and other matters would be allowed to appear on local government websites, as would legal notices that attorneys are required to provide in estate settlements and other matters.

The idea behind current law is simple: When the government is considering doing something that affects you, it has to let the public know, and people are still more likely to come upon such notices in a newspaper than on a government website. So why the push for change? Lucy Pate, spokesperson for N.C. Association of County Commissioners, told the News & Observer there is “broad support among our members to give counties more options to reach their communities.”

But nothing is stopping those counties from putting the notices on their websites in addition to publishing them in newspapers. Allowing counties to take notices out of newspapers accomplishes the opposite, and it’s not the best way to ensure that a government acts openly and transparently.

Yes, doing so also would hurt newspapers. Neither HB 35 or HB 51 would affect the Charlotte Observer or News & Observer of Raleigh, but they would have an impact on the revenue of smaller newspapers, which have been disappearing across the country in a harsh financial landscape. We understand that lawmakers might not be ready to rally behind outlets that watch over them, especially when they’re trying to maneuver around a law instead of acting in the spirit of it. But the public is best served when its governments don’t operate in the dark.

In fact, this editorial board has long advocated for getting public information in front of more people, not less. We support measures that would force all North Carolina newspapers to run public and legal notices online as well as in print, at no extra charge. The combined print and online audience for most newspapers is larger than ever. Requiring online publication of notices would help ensure that more of the public sees what’s happening with its government.

That, after all, should be the goal of public servants. The current public notice law has served that purpose well. Judiciary committee members should reject this legislative sleight of hand, and lawmakers should work to improve public notice transparency, not dilute it.