HARRISBURG -- A freshman Democrat from Fayette County isn't happy that Pennsylvania's open records law has been ranked 48th worst in the nation.

Rep. Tim Mahoney of South Union has come up with a proposed Right To Know Law "that I hope will put us in the top five. We need to get the best open records law we can, so we can begin to restore the public's faith in government."

He plans to push for the bill today on the House floor, and said debate could last into tomorrow and even Wednesday, as up to 50 amendments are discussed at length.

Mr. Mahoney said he wants to get rid of some changes made to his proposal, House Bill 443, by a House committee two weeks ago.

They would provide "blanket exemptions" to keep large amounts of information private, including "all communications," like e-mails and letters, "between a legislator and constituents and all documents related to the communication." Another broad exemption would prevent release of "correspondence and related records by a public official, a public official's staff and an agency."

The amended bill also would exempt performance audits of state agencies from public release. State and local agencies could also refuse to release information they regarded as "harassing" or "burdensome."

Douglas Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association, said the changes made by the committee "make the bill fatally flawed and [should] be reworked."

The amended bill "is a significant step in the wrong direction and would result in less access than the public has today," said Tim Williams, Pennsylvania Newspaper Association president. Pennsylvania "would be the only state in the country that has such a broad e-mail exemption," he added.

Mr. Mahoney said there are three key points to his bill.

• Requiring all state agencies to post their budgets and expenses online at the beginning of each fiscal year July 1. "That's one way to avoid all the mess-ups we've had with PHEAA," he said, referring to lavish spending on salaries, bonuses and conferences by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency.

• Creating a new state agency where citizens could go for relief if they were denied information by local or state officials.

• "Flipping on its head" the presumption that has existed for years regarding government records in Pennsylvania. They have been presumed to be private unless a requester can convince a government agency that they are public. Mr. Mahoney wants most records regarded as public unless a valid reason can be shown why they're not.

"We have a lot of work to do on the open records bill," Mr. Mahoney said. "It's like that old joke -- how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

The Legislature is probably weeks away from giving final approval to an open records law. Whatever the House passes will have to be reconciled with one of two Senate versions, Senate Bill 1, by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester, and Senate Bill 765, sponsored by Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park. The Senate's State Government Committee may meet today to discuss those bills.

Supporters of a new Right To Know Law say that any exemptions to openness should be narrowly tailored and spelled out as specifically as possible in the legislation. Mr. Ferlo agreed, listing in his bill 20 specific pieces of information that should be protected from release to the public -- such as a person's Social Security number, driver's license number or financial account number; a company's trade secrets; state or federal security information; and a person's medical history.