Shielding the manufacturers of execution drugs from public scrutiny — at a time of enormous nationwide controversy over how states are conducting executions — undermines democracy and makes future problems with Ohio’s death-penalty law more likely. It’s not the sort of measure to rush though a lame-duck session of the General Assembly in the final days of a two-year session.

But that’s exactly what’s happening. Last week, the state Senate returned the death-penalty bill to the House, where it began and which is scheduled to take up the measure today. After a concurrence vote, the House would send the bill to Gov. John Kasich.

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The governor and House members should reject this attempt to solve though secrecy the problem of obtaining effective, and comparatively humane, drugs for executions.

By excluding from public record — and thus mandatory disclosure — information and records about compounding pharmacies that make the state’s lethal injection drug, the plan violates Ohio’s open-records laws. It would keep citizens from holding their government accountable as the state seeks to carry out executions in a proper and constitutional manner. The law also would make it more difficult for courts to monitor executions.

The Senate made the bill slightly less egregious by limiting the 20-year secrecy shield to companies that do business with the state in the next two years. The bill would create a study committee that would force lawmakers to revisit the issue after that two-year period. A six-member legislative committee would study the “means and manner” of Ohio’s executions, without debating the broader question of whether the state should continue to use the death penalty.

Ohio can no longer obtain its lethal-injection drug of choice, the powerful sedative pentobarbital, because the drug’s European manufacturer refused, on moral grounds, to make it available for executions. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction tried an alternative that combined midazolam, a barbiturate, and hydromorphone, a potent painkiller. That resulted in the botched execution last January of Dennis McGuire, who took as long as 26 minutes to die, while he convulsed, choked, gasped, and snorted.

Given the problems that face Ohio and other death-penalty states, voters need to know what their governments are doing to find suitable drugs and effective protocols. Shielding the identity of drug vendors would prevent taxpayers from knowing whether products from the same manufacturer caused problems with executions in other states.

Lawmakers hope that providing some anonymity will help persuade skittish pharmacies to manufacture the state’s lethal-injection drug of choice. That’s a flawed and fundamentally undemocratic strategy.

There’s no evidence that compounding pharmacies face any danger. Protest is the stuff of democracy, but current laws adequately protect companies from unreasonable harassment.

A federal court has paused executions in Ohio until next February, when Ronald Phillips of Summit County is scheduled to die. Ohioans need to know — especially in the next two years — how the Kasich administration is securing lethal-injection drugs. Making the House bill law would leave them in the dark on a matter of life and death.

First Published December 17, 2014, 5:00 a.m.