It’s insulting when a state government incapable of performing its most basic duty — producing a timely, balanced budget — chooses instead to spend its time putting needless restrictions on the public’s access to government information.

This week, when they should be hammering out the 2016-17 state budget, state representatives voted unanimously for a bill that bans the release of information about 911 callers, victims or witnesses unless a 911 center or a judge determines the public’s interest outweighs keeping the information secret.

The vote followed a 49-1 Senate vote in favor of the measure, known as House Bill 1310. Gov. Tom Wolf has said he will sign it.

That’s a shame. The legislation is an unnecessary and inappropriate restriction on the public’s right to know.

News organizations across Pennsylvania oppose HB1310. The Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association, which represents hundreds of newspapers including the Butler Eagle, has argued against the bill, on the grounds that the state Right to Know Law already protects records relating to 911 calls. Exceptions are made only where an agency or court finds that the public interest in disclosure outweighs any interest in nondisclosure.

Current law makes time-response logs public. Time-response logs are records showing the time and location of 911 calls and the corresponding emergency response. The Commonwealth Court has ruled that access to time-response logs is of significant public interest. They show how much time elapses between the receipt of a 911 call and the arrival at the scene of police, fire or ambulance services.

Obviously, basic information about time and place is critical in evaluating the adequacy of the emergency response.

The new law attempts to override the Commonwealth Court decision by blocking access to all “identifying information” in emergency dispatch calls — specifically the name, telephone number, address and location of any call or caller. This would include the incident location and, by inference, the time-response log.

Incident addresses have long been public in police blotters and court records, and are easily heard through police scanners owned and used by individuals across Pennsylvania. The rise of social media has made communication about incident locations even more common, with observers posting on social media information about police, fire and other incidents that they observe in a public location.

Response location is vital public information. The public should be able to measure the adequacy and timing of response by 911 call centers and emergency services. Without any geographical information, there is no way to determine whether a response time was slow or fast — and no way to measure whether response times vary in different neighborhoods or socioeconomic areas.

To put it more simply, there would be no accountability for the spending of our tax dollars for public safety.

The Right to Know Law already protects records that, if disclosed, would threaten an individual’s physical safety. Creating a blanket exemption for identifying information, as provided in this bill, is both unnecessary and overbroad.

HB1310 would eliminate any public oversight of the emergency response system and significantly undervalue the important public policy supporting disclosure of this basic information.

For a Wolf administration that has said it’s committed to transparent government, HB1310 represents a step in the wrong direction. Not only is it unnecessary and redundant, but in the age of social media it won’t prevent the dissemination of this information.

With a state budget deadline looming — and an embarrassing disregard for the current budget year’s blown deadline — restriction of government information is not the issue of the moment. Far from it.