Pennsylvania's open-records law will provide an early glimpse at how much genuine reform and improved transparency can be expected from the new session of the General Assembly.

Within the next month, Senate Republicans plan to introduce legislation that would make a number of long-overdue, positive revisions to the Right-to-Know Law, some of which, from the perspective of lawmakers, are close to home.

Democrats should join their GOP colleagues in bringing about the changes, as well as in seeking additional ways to make state government more transparent.

As revealed by Sen. Dominic Pileggi of Delaware County, the Senate's majority leader, one of the most important proposals involves exposing legislative spending, which could reach approximately $341 million this year, to the open-records law.

"I'm going to make what I hope will be a compelling argument that there's nothing to hide there and we should make them (records) available," Pileggi said.

Although under no legal obligation to do so in the past, the House and Senate have at times released spending by individual lawmakers. But secrecy nonetheless has predominated.

To discourage efforts to obtain information — information that is within the parameters of the public's right to know — the two chambers oftentimes take months to fulfill records requests. And then to add to the frustration, there are restrictions on photocopying of documents.

Taxpayers are paying the bills and, in these instances, have been denied quick, reasonable access to what they are paying for.

Adding to the obstructionism is the fact that little information is available on the Internet.

According to Pileggi, the upcoming legislation, in addition to focusing on the General Assembly, will cover financial records of the judiciary, four state-related universities and the state's student loan agency.

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) has been in the news during the past year regarding its refusal to release expense records for nearly $900,000 agency officials spent on seven PHEAA board retreats since 2000.

PHEAA has continued to balk at releasing the records, despite an appellate court order to turn over the documentation to three news organizations that sought the data.

Meanwhile, another of the lingering issues that the new legislation would encompass involves Penn State University's refusal to release the salary of head football coach Joe Paterno, although the secrecy surrounding Paterno's salary is of small significance when stacked up against the secrecy that has engulfed General Assembly finances.

State residents can be excused for being skeptical about whether the commonwealth's judiciary will embrace a new, broader openness about how the courts spend money. The judiciary traditionally has sought to protect its status as a "society" closed from public scrutiny.

The judiciary should not be made exempt to what is being proposed, however.

What the GOP intends to propose — if that intent is genuine — is significant in the aftermath of the ill-fated July 2005 legislative pay-raise vote and the torrent of voter anger it unleased both in the 2005 general election (when a sitting state Supreme Court justice was rejected for retention) and the elections of 2006 (when a number of longtime, powerful lawmakers failed to win re-election). The significance is in the fact that lawmakers now seem less comfortable about taking legislative actions that are not in the taxpayers' or state's best interests.

The pay-raise vote awakened state voters from their long, unfortunate slumber. If the legislature fails to accomplish long-needed reforms in state government operations — including what Pileggi has outlined — during this new legislative session, the voters will be justified in continuing their assault on incumbency at the ballot box in 2008.

Open records discourage waste and abuse. It's long overdue that the General Assembly acknowledges that and — finally — acts to remove the veil of secrecy that has been a detriment to efficient, effective state government for too many years.

The General Assembly should use this open-records proposal as an opportunity to begin this new session in the right way.