Ever play Opposite Day?

It's annoying. People say yes when they mean no, good when they mean bad and pretty when they mean ugly, for example.

Members of the state House of Representatives played the game last week, when they debated for hours and voted on more than 50 amendments to what began as a reform of the state's right-to-know law. In their efforts to define open records, they came up with a list of what's not open:

Not e-mail. Not correspondence between legislators and constituents. Not correspondence between legislators and other state agencies. Not emergency dispatch records such as 911 calls. Not internal performance audits.

Sure, the bill presumes that records are open unless noted as an exception, and it would apply to the legislators, which is not the case now. But it won't apply to most records created before the new law goes into effect, and that wouldn't be until July 2009.

When Rep. Babette Josephs, a Philadelphia Democrat, tried to include e-mail as a public record, only 69 representatives voted for her amendment, just five of them from Allegheny County. (For a list of how members from Western Pennsylvania voted on the amendment, click here.)

House Bill 443 does not deserve to pass. The bill would make it harder to get information and hold public officials and agencies accountable for their decisions. In some respects, it's worse than Pennsylvania's current law, which is 50 years old and regarded as among the most restrictive in the nation.

There's a better version in the Senate, one that matches some favorable provisions of the House plan but not the most onerous ones. Senate Bill 1 does not exempt e-mail, it covers financial records of the judiciary and it sets five days as the time for agencies to respond to requests for information. Intentional violations and requests denied in bad faith could result in $1,000 fines, and the bill provides for training state and local officials in handling information requests.

It's not perfect, but Senate Bill 1 is the better plan for reforming the public records law. The House bill is turning into a disaster.