It would be difficult to make a bigger mess of the handling of office space at City Hall for Rep. Dan Bishop than what has occurred, and there is plenty of blame to spread around, from the beginning to what we expect will be the end Monday night — at least for the city.

We must wait to see if Bishop, the newly elected Republican representative, will just shrug his shoulders and say nevermind to a City Hall location. Despite what at least one city councilman believes, the congressman having an office centralized in Robeson would benefit a county that needs every edge it can get.

First, Mayor Bruce Davis and some City Council members jumped the gun, apparently privately hatching a deal with Bishop’s office for a single dollar a year for office space at City Hall. Davis, in mounting a defense, said that was the same deal the city gave Rep. Robert Pittenger, and he apparently thought he was in bounds.

But other city council members likely found out about the deal from reading this newspaper, an article that included a picture that, shall we say, lacked diversity. Not a good look.

So Councilman John Cantey and Councilman Chris Howard lashed out on Wednesday during the council’s policy meeting, asking why they and others had been excluded from the process. The matter was tabled until Monday night, when the council, in a 6 to 2 vote, came up with a compromise, which was to offer Bishop office space for $457 a month.

It’s an odd number that was settled upon but the path to it makes sense. The city would charge Bishop the same per-foot rate that the city charged Mike McIntyre, the homegrown Democratic U.S. representative who paid $800 a month for City Hall, but enjoyed more space than Bishop would have.

But between Wednesday and Monday this newspaper spoke with the most vocal critic of the $1-a-year offer, Cantey, and instead of limiting his criticism to the process, he felt a need to take cheap shots at Bishop.

Cantey, who worked to elect Democrat Dan McCready, just couldn’t contain himself, offering that Bishop would begin campaigning for re-election soon, intimating there would be no time for helping residents of this county, is a first-term representative without any power, and wouldn’t be able to deliver.

Cantey’s words: “When he gets up there, his office in D.C. is going to be in the basement with no windows. He’ll have no clout.”

Cantey’s was a gratuitous shot, one that has absolutely no upside, and could be detrimental to the community. Remember, Cantey is a locally elected official who has been on a constant whine since Hurricane Matthew about the tediously slow drip of relief dollars into this county — the kind of thing that a U.S. congressman can help with.

What Cantey fails to understand is that while Bishop will be in the minority in the House, that doesn’t hamstring his ability to deliver constituent services, including such things as nominations for service academies, help with passport problems, providing assistance to veterans, and that list is only getting started. It is worth noting that Bishop was a state senator until a couple of weeks ago, and remains well-connected with the party in power in Raleigh.

We hope Bishop is above politics, but he is a Republican, and elephants are notorious for having long memories, so we will just have to see. We know Bishop’s chief of staff, Peter Barnes, attended the City Hall meeting on Monday — and probably didn’t like what he saw.

So we will just have to see how it unfolds, but our guess is there are plenty of empty offices around Robeson County, and perhaps someone will come up with a better deal, maybe office space for free. At least one county commissioner told this newspaper he will see if the county can provide free office space at the BB&T building when it moves its administrative offices there.

Should that happen, the city will owe the county a debt for cleaning up its mess.