Public notices legal advertisements are a source of revenue for newspapers. It's important to acknowledge that upfront in the debate over a state Senate bill that is not in the best interests of Pennsylvanians.

But in the debate over Senate Bill 419, which would allow local governments to take public notices out of newspapers and put them on government Web sites, it's important to put all aspects of that proposal on the table and look at what could happen if the bill were to pass.

What the public would lose through the bill's passage would be much more far-reaching and potentially damaging than the financial impact of such advertising on government or school district budgets. The loss to the public would be much more extensive than the negative financial impact for newspapers.

The bill should be soundly defeated, and state residents should contact their state senators to voice their opposition.

For most municipalities, counties and school districts, legal advertising amounts to a fraction of 1 percent of most of their yearly budgets, despite proponents' arguments focusing on the purportedly big savings from pulling the ads out of newspapers.

Newspapers would feel the pain of that lost revenue, but it wouldn't be fatal. However, an assault on the public's right to know could have costly implications and complications regarding, among other things, the taxes people pay, regulations governing property use, spending of taxpayer money, and possibly unwanted entities moving to a community.

Further, and no less troubling, is that this bill, if passed, could encourage costly back-door deals, cronyism and secrecy that could make the money paid for legal ads in newspapers seem like pocket change.

Of course, passage of Senate Bill 419 wouldn't result in government officials automatically becoming corrupt, or shifting their activities to self-interest from the public's best interests. But it would make it easier for officials to approve actions that they would be more reluctant to OK under a more transparent process tied to the public's right to know. It would be easier to game the system.

And, people should have no doubts about Senate Bill 419's ability to be an enemy of government transparency. The bill was a bad idea from the get-go.

People can now go to a newspaper's legal advertisements section and quickly access information about theirs and other municipal governments' activities, such as dates and times for special meetings, and dates and times of public hearings dealing with a proposed project or change in land use, or solicitation for bids for services or products.

Such information might not be so easy to find tucked away on a government Web site that the public might have difficulty navigating.

One reason is that the bill doesn't establish any standards for how and where those notices would be required to be placed on government Web sites. And if people complain about not seeing a legal ad, the argument coming from governments could be: "The information was there; you just didn't see it."

There would be no way to verify whether the ad appeared on the Web site as required, unlike legal ads printed in newspapers.

Meanwhile, it's important to note that Census figures show that many state residents about 30 percent; some studies say up to 40 percent still do not have Internet access, putting them at a big disadvantage when it comes to knowing what's happening in their community if legal ads are found only on government Web sites.

The Hazleton Standard-Speaker described the situation this way: "Removing government notices from newspapers is a sure-fire way to guarantee that those governments become even more opaque a consequence far more expensive to the public than the costs of advertising the government's business."

Another state newspaper summed up the situation as follows:

"We've seen what has gone on in Harrisburg in recent years with late-night pay raises, appalling abuses of power and continued manipulation of the law by those who create it. Do we want even more hidden from public view and in their control?"

The answer to that question is easy: No.

Senate Bill 419 is bad from an open-government standpoint; it's bad from a good-government standpoint; and it's bad from the standpoint of lawmakers', county and municipal officials', and school board members' obligations to those they serve.

There is no gray area as to whether or not the proposed bill deserves to be passed. It doesn't.

Hopefully, state senators representing Butler County Mary Jo White, R-21st; Jane Orie, R-40th; Don White, R-41st; and Bob Robbins, R-50th will be at the forefront in working for this bill's defeat.