If voters are to restore any level of accountability to state government, they must not forget the secretive, unethical and arrogant machinations state lawmakers used to approve themselves a 16 percent to 34 percent pay hike last month. Thankfully, the news media and lawmakers themselves are keeping this story alive.

The latest developments find that 21 Pennsylvania lawmakers who voted against the pay raise are now receiving the additional pay they voted against. It was also reported that 10 lawmakers who voted for the pay raise have decided not to accept the additional money at this time. Of those accepting the extra money, several are reportedly donating it to charitable causes in their home districts.

Skirting the clear intent of the state constitution, which bars lawmakers from voting themselves a pay raise by requiring that higher pay not be implemented until after the following election, our representatives in Harrisburg are utilizing a technique called "unvouchered expenses" to put the extra money in their pockets now, instead of waiting until December 2006, as required by law.

Lawmakers defend the use of unvouchered expenses, pointing out that the state courts ruled in 1997 that they were not illegal.

That issue might soon be revisited, as Gene Stilp, a political activist who filed the previous lawsuit following a similar pay hike in 1995, filed a new suit this week in Commonwealth Court to block the raises.

Stilp's lawsuit challenges the raises over the use of unvouchered expenses. In 1997, the courts said Stilp had not proved that the additional expense money was not for actual expenses incurred by lawmakers. This time around, Stilp has said he will press lawmakers to document their expenses in court.

Such an exercise would be interesting, as it seems impossible that lawmakers could provide documentation to back up the sudden jump in their expenses that, coincidentally, corresponds to the exact amount of additional money they would be receiving if the raise could be legally instituted at this time. The undocumented expenses are clearly a ruse that just about every citizen in the state can recognize - even if the state's courts can't.

After all, lawmakers are public employees spending public money. Why shouldn't their expenses be documented - and public? Every lawmaker receiving the extra money via unvouchered expenses should be willing to produce documentation showing just how his or her expenses jumped by precisely the same amount since July.

The state courts should rule unvouchered expenses to be illegal. An alternative, but less-satisfactory, solution might be found in a bill being drafted by Rep. Will Gabig, R-Carlisle, that would make unvouchered expenses.

Gabig might be well-intentioned, but what chances of success in the legislature does a bill have that would eliminate a back-door mechanism for accelerating pay increases for the very lawmakers who would be asked to vote for it? Pennsylvania's lawmakers have demonstrated very clearly that they will vote in favor of their own self-interests, not against them.

When the next legislative elections arrive in the spring and fall of 2006, voters must remember every detail of the sordid pay-hike affair - and vote to turn out enough incumbents to put the remaining lawmakers on notice that they cannot thumb their noses so flagrantly at taxpayers and get away with it.