In this season of drastic budget cuts and predictions of grimmer fiscal times ahead, one small-potatoes bill before the legislature could be both a minor money-saver and a big boost to good government.

Raised Bill 104 would take the state’s public information station, CT-N — Connecticut Television Network — out of the state budget and make it a nonprofit “state civic network,” saving $3.2 million annually while expanding coverage to virtually all sessions of the General Assembly and its committees.

Any Connecticut household with cable or satellite television would gain access to CT-N because the bill, as written, would make it a “must carry” option, meaning TV providers would have to offer it to their subscribers. All programming, including most proceedings of the legislature and the state Supreme and Appellate courts, would also be available as streaming video online.

The state launched CT-N, modeled on C-Span, in 1998 to broadcast unedited coverage of public events and deliberations. It’s fair to ask why anyone but a politician’s mother would want to watch hours of speechifying, but that would be missing the point: With the “must carry” mandate comes today’s technology of on-demand viewing of whatever specific topic is dear to the heart or wallet: gun control, medical marijuana, state employee layoffs, for example.

The bill was introduced by the Government Administration and Elections Committee, co-chaired by state Rep. Ed Jutila, Democrat of East Lyme, and it deserves to pass, despite the protestations of cable and satellite providers.

The providers’ issues with the bill have to do with the proposed method of sustainably financing the expanded service, by means of a fee – they call it a tax – which they would have to pay to CT-N’s parent organization, Connecticut Public Affairs Network, Inc., for carrying a mandated channel.

Equally galling to them is the proposed availability of streaming video, which competes with their subscription services and is often free. Congress has ruled that states cannot charge Internet broadband providers, so that blocks that option for non-governmental funding.

While that may not be totally fair, the charge is predicted to be about 40 cents per month per subscriber, which cable and satellite providers will undoubtedly pass on to their customers. It’s hard to think of that as a tax or see a meaningful distinction from the many dollars’ worth of programming customers pay for now, whether they want the Kardashians or not. Some local providers, including Atlantic Broadband and its predecessor, Metrocast, have been carrying CT-N for years.

The makeover of CT-N into an independent cable channel with its own resources would doubly benefit governmental transparency by providing the wherewithal to cover all 10 legislative meeting rooms at once, instead of just two at a time, and by separating the network from the state budget and the political pressure that goes with it.

The network would also add to its elections coverage, not least because it would give voters a searchable way to see what their elected representatives do to earn their trust in sponsoring and debating legislative bills. Expanded coverage could even illuminate the murky process of “implementer bills,” those last-minute, undebated provisions attached to budget-implementing laws to slip in a surprise, like the near miss of an unannounced special taxing district for the Seaside Regional property in Waterford a few years ago.

Independent coverage is a cherished constitutional freedom that keeps light shining on the workings of a democracy. While newspapers and other media continue to shrink their coverage due to fiscal pressures resulting from the digital age, a state civic network that records virtually all public legislative proceedings, as well as elections and high court sessions, in effect becomes another publication of record. It would also be one more tool those journalists who are still on the job could utilize to report on the workings of government.

The legislature has already cut several hundred thousand dollars from CT-N for the rest of this fiscal year because of the state budget shortfall. Failure of Raised Bill 104 to pass could mean less coverage, not more, in the upcoming fiscal year and election season.

A few cents a month is a good bargain for a better eye on government.