New mandates buried deep in the 6,198-page state budget bill passed June 30 by Ohio lawmakers will remove some requirements that local governments post official notice of public projects and business in the newspaper of record.

The move is the latest assault by legislators in an ongoing attempt to limit the public’s access to government’s actions.

The new law takes effect Tuesday. It softens protections in place for decades that required municipalities to publish the public’s business in the newspaper. Until now, Ohio law ensured local government was conducting business in the open by requiring newspaper publication of things such as legal notices, public projects being bid, public property up for sale and many other items of which the public has an absolute right to know.

The process now will be replaced with options that include allowing local municipalities to publish notices on their municipal website, or worse, on social channels.

Without any guarantee of transparency, it will become convenient for government officials to withhold the public’s business and information — from the public.

The new law serves only to further limit the public’s ability to keep track of government business and for bidders to fairly compete on projects. That’s wrong.

The language in House Bill 33, the state budget bill, provides three options for municipalities to publicize their legal notices: a) publish a print advertisement in the local newspaper; b) publish a stand-alone digital advertisement on publicnoticesohio.com, a site populated through automated feeds from newspapers of general circulation and legal journals in Ohio; or c) publish a digital notice on the municipality’s own website or its online accounts.

According to the Ohio News Media Association’s Monica Nieporte, the organization never was consulted about functionality or capabilities of www.publicnoticesohio.com. There is no “self-serve” portal to allow anyone to place a stand-alone digital ad there.

When published in the newspaper, the public can easily search and find notices. There is no such evidence of proper notification if a municipality merely places the notices on its website or on an online platform.

Legal notices placed in the newspaper are where citizens are accustomed to finding such information. The local newspaper and its website will have a larger daily audience than the municipality’s website or social media account; and, if the notice runs in a newspaper, it automatically becomes part of publicnoticesohio.com.

Moving public notices out of high traffic areas to municipal websites or social pages begs the question: what are lawmakers trying to hide?

Government has the obligation to give notice to its citizens. The citizens should not be burdened with routinely searching websites and other digital platforms just in case a notice has been posted.

Ohio lawmakers, at their first opportunity, should fix this mess. It’s the right thing to do.