HARRISBURG — State legislators received a firsthand look Tuesday at why critics say Pennsylvania's open-records law is too weak: In front of them, the state's top highway official reversed a decision his agency had made to withhold bridge safety ratings from the public.

As part of a hearing on proposed changes to the open-records law, the House State Government Committee had requested testimony from the Department of Transportation on why it refused to release bridge safety ratings to a newspaper that had asked for them several months ago.

With the collapse of a major bridge in Minnesota last week, bridge safety is a high-profile issue across the country, and Transportation Secretary Allen D. Biehler told legislators he would release the ratings despite internal agency concerns that releasing information would cause undue alarm or breach public security.

"It's simply a judgment call," Biehler told the panel. "I'd rather err on the side of providing information."

Biehler said he arrived at the decision Tuesday morning, before he testified.

Critics of the state's open-records law say that, among other things, it gives officials at all levels of government wide latitude to deny public records requests, a loophole they say has helped make Pennsylvania one of the worst public-access states in the country.

Under current law, the definition of a public record is limited to an account, voucher or contract, or a minute, order or decision. House and Senate bills under consideration would widen the definition so that everything is considered a public record unless specifically exempt.

The extent of those exemptions are likely to be the subject of long and heated debate, from the e-mails that are sent between government officials to tapes of calls to emergency-response centers.