A question has been swirling around some corners of the reform-the-Legislature movement this month: Why did a trio of groups supporting greater transparency, some of whom have previously taken Beacon Hill to task for its closed-door ways, support legislation that crusading state Auditor Diana DiZoglio dubbed a “dumpster fire”?

The answer has to do with the messy sausage-making details of legislation — details that in this case are perhaps not so much a bug as a feature of the bill designed to smooth its passage.

When House leaders announced plans for a controversial measure that would both curtail DiZoglio’s power to audit the Legislature and also subject lawmakers to public records requirements, they included statements of support from the ACLU of Massachusetts, the good-government group Common Cause, and the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association. Those written comments focused only on the records portion of the bill, not the audit sections.

But the statements caught some observers off guard, given that the legislation tied the two issues together, and muddied the debate over a path forward on issues that have roiled state government for years. Rep. Mike Connolly, who wound up voting against the proposal, even picked up the phone to call leaders at the ACLU and Common Cause to ask if they were endorsing the whole bill or just one segment of it.

Meanwhile, one of the leaders of the campaign pushing a ballot question to apply the public records law to the Legislature pointed out that House leaders did not approach her organization about the proposal, despite pitching it as a way to eliminate the need for a statewide vote.

“It was curious to me that those were the organizations whose opinions were solicited on this,” said Scotia Hille, executive director of Act on Mass, about the trio of groups that supported the House bill. “None of them are involved in the campaign.”

While endorsing the House’s public records reforms, the ACLU, Common Cause, and the newspaper publishers’ group are all staying silent on the arguably more controversial portion of the bill curtaining the audit-the-Legislature power voters gave to DiZoglio.

In the weeks following the vote, the ACLU clarified that it neither supports nor opposes anything related to auditing the Legislature. The civil rights group for years has avoided taking a position on DiZoglio’s underlying fight, and it does not have a stance on the provisions in the newly approved House bill that would permanently limit the scope of any legislative audit and bar any auditor from going to court to force Beacon Hill’s compliance.

“We were specifically asked by the House to weigh in on the right way to balance constitutionality, privacy, and transparency for the public records provisions of the bill,” Gavi Wolfe, legislative director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “While we have not been engaged on the intragovernmental audit, it has been the subject of constitutional concerns raised by both advocates and scholars regarding separation of powers, and we don’t want the important expansion of the public records law to face similar delays.”