(Editor’s Note: This editorial originally appeared in the Feb. 16, 2014 edition of The Arizona Republic and is reprinted here with permission.)

Rep. John Kavanagh is a small-government, free-market kind of guy. He so firmly believes that private enterprise is more efficient than government that he pushed to end the practice of auditing whether private prisons were saving the state money.

So it’s amazing to see him sponsoring a bill that would take a role performed by Arizona businesses and give it to state government.

Kavanagh wants the Arizona Corporation Commission to spend $65,000 in taxpayer money to create a website where minimal information about corporate and limited-liability company filings would be posted for 90 days. He says this would be a boon to the public and business.

Neither is true.

Current law requires detailed filings to be published in a newspaper. There, they become part of a permanent record, available to the public. Newspapers provide affidavits as legal proof of notice, something the Corporation Commission would not do. What’s more, 15 years ago Arizona’s newspapers created a website, publicnoticeads.com, where the public can search filings years after they were posted.

This creates greater transparency at no cost to taxpayers. Kavanagh should be celebrating this, not trying to destroy it.

Business isn’t clamoring for a change. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce oppose the bill. “Why should we spend tax resources to create a new system when an existing system already exists in the private sector?” asks Chad Heinrich of the Phoenix chamber.

Politicians don’t like the news media to poke into their business. But this change would be a mere paper cut to The Arizona Republic. It would be a deep wound for niche and small-town newspapers, like the one that serves Kavanagh’s Fountain Hills.

That’s right. Kavanagh’s bill would enlarge government while taking revenue from a family-owned business in his hometown. If he can’t see what’s wrong with that, the full House should help him out and kill this bill.