Who should be most alarmed about the decline of local news? Republicans.

[Commentary]  Not only has voter participation in local elections fallen to dangerously low levels, but the health of local newspapers, traditional watchdogs for the most direct and abundant form of government in the United States, has also been deteriorating. The Republican Party — yes, the same party whose leader derides the media as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”  — should be particularly alarmed. Because if conservatives are concerned about keeping government as efficient and local as possible, they need the hundreds of local newspapers to make the system work across the country.

As illustrated by a new paper presented at the Brookings Institution’s Municipal Finance Conference, there is a symbiotic relationship between local papers and the governments they cover.  The paper, which is in the process of being peer-reviewed, looked at newspaper closures between 1996 and 2015 and found that once a newspaper goes under, it becomes more expensive in the long run for its local government to borrow money. And it’s not just bond markets. Newspaper closures are also linked to rising wages for government employees and to growing numbers of government employees per capita in a county. Other research shows that elected officials from areas with little local media coverage are less responsive to their constituents. The decline of the local free press is a threat to the decentralized system of government envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

[Robert Gebelhoff is an assistant editor for The Post's Opinions section]