In setting its legislative priorities for the coming session of the Connecticut legislature, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments has again voted to make eliminating legal notice publication requirements for municipalities a priority.

As mayor of the City of New London, I served for four years as a member of the council of governments. During this time, I was often the lone dissenting vote against eliminating this publication requirement.

In part, as mayor, I was concerned about the future of one of the city’s largest taxpayers and employers, The Day Publishing Company. This was not, however, my only, or most important, reason for opposing this change. I had greater concerns related to government transparency and, more important, government accountability.

Not only do publication requirements for legal notices ensure a degree of transparency in government that the public should expect, but they also provide a valuable income stream to our state’s newspaper industry. This same industry has been under significant financial pressure in our ever-changing technological environment.

The public should never forget that newspapers not only publish legal notices, police logs and sports scores, but they also employ trained journalists who can perform investigative work into the affairs of government. Without a trained core of journalistic professionals, and without the platform of local newspapers to exhibit their work, even more of our government’s actions would disappear behind a veil of secrecy.

With a new incoming federal administration that has shown an open hostility to the media, and with a president-elect who has publicly encouraged the reopening of libel laws to be used against journalists, now, more than ever, our nation needs newspapers.

The federal government is already empowered by such laws as the Patriot Act, the National Security Act and the National Defense Reauthorization Act that have all left our Bill of Rights in tatters. A free press, whose foundation since the time of the American Revolution has always been the American newspaper, is now even more relevant as a safeguard of our liberties, and as a check and balance on a very powerful government.

In municipal affairs, municipal leaders may not wield the legal powers of the federal government, but without local newspapers to keep them honest, most, if not all, of their decisions would be kept entirely out of the public eye. The public needs more then just legal notices about what their local government is doing. The public needs trained journalistic professionals to investigate and to provide commentary on whether these actions are appropriate.

Without this essential oversight, government policy will increasingly represent the views of the connected and powerful few. Without our newspapers, government policy will less and less represent the views of all the American people.

For these reasons, even in difficult budgetary times, the state legislature should not eliminate the requirement that municipal governments publish their legal notices in their local newspapers.

Our local newspapers, for all their shortcomings and all their faults, are the last line of defense against government corruption and tyranny.

Daryl Finizio, an attorney, is a former mayor of New London.