Even good legislative bills face the law of unintended consequences. Bad bills, however, attract negative consequences like magnets.

Rep. Eric K. Hutchings's House Bill 281 is not a good bill and it is chock full of risk to public access to information held by state and local government.

The Kearns Republican's bill declares that the names, ages, address, phone numbers and Social Security numbers of juveniles are considered private records under the Government Records Access and Management Act.

Hutchings crafted HB 281 as a way, purportedly, to keep pedophiles from hunting for victims in the rosters of youth athletic leagues.

The idea that child molesters are down at local recreation offices submitting formal GRAMA requests for youth soccer, Little League or basketball rosters is absurd. There is no record of any pedophile doing this, and it is unlikely that anyone bent on harming children is going to draw attention to himself by asking for a directory of children and then creating a paper trail straight back to himself.

This effort by Hutchings is nothing more than another message bill in a legislative session unusually packed with such nonsense. Unfortunately, HB 281 comes with a host of potential unintended consequences that would shut off a lot more information than athletic records.

For instance, rosters of school athletic teams could be considered private records, since they contain the names of student athletes. This law could preclude the school, as an agent of the state government, from producing a media guide for school teams. Forget about getting a printed program for the school play that lists the cast and crew. That would be forbidden information if Hutchings's bill ever becomes law.

The rule could complicate life for newspapers, especially the small weekly papers that practically live and die on school news. High school sports coverage would be difficult, if not impossible. Honor rolls could be discontinued unless the parents were the ones to submit the information, as happened to birth announcements in the newspaper after the HIPPA law forbade hospitals from releasing information about patients.

The newsletters schools send home would need to be sanitized to avoid mentioning the names of any students.

Hutchings's bill also would create a legal conundrum for student media. Could a school-sponsored newspaper or yearbook even be published, since the school would be barred by law from releasing the names of minors? And what about Amber alerts? Could the state release the name, age and hometown of a minor who has been kidnapped even though the law says it is private?

If common sense rules, then the bill will have created a double standard where blocking some information is enforced while other information is not. This over-broad bill does not adequately differentiate between what should be blocked and what shouldn't.

Under HB 281, the Summit County Sheriff may not have been able to announce that Garret Bardsley was missing in the High Unitas. His identity would be a private record. Likewise, the bill would affect the information police can release about traffic accidents, murders and other crimes.

These are all legitimate concerns. Hutchings did not do a thorough analysis of the long-term consequences of his bill. It just sounded good.

It's a poor basis for public policy, and the Legislature should reject this bill along with all the other message bills that are currently clogging the drain on Capitol Hill.

Utah's current open records statute, GRAMA, was carefully thought through. Any amendments through the years have likewise been careful. And guess what? The current law already protects such things as home addresses and Social Security numbers from unwarranted public disclosure. Other laws already provide minors with privacy protection, such as the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Division of Child and Family Service's confidentiality regulations.

So what will Hutchings's bill achieve? Nothing of value. It takes a first step down a path of civic silliness never before contemplated by reasonable people.

GRAMA has served Utah well for 14 years. Legislators should not alter it just to go after a bogeyman.