Pennsylvanians are looking to Harrisburg, hoping state lawmakers will do the right thing regarding citizens' access to government documents. That might sound naive, given the 2005 middle-of-the-night pay-raise vote, the use of unvouchered expenses, the pension grab of 2001 and the nearly $4 million spent in late 2006 for legislative bonuses that appear linked to purely political re-election work.

Still, it appears that there is a chance that lawmakers in the House of Representatives will abandon proposed revisions that would actually worsen the state's 50-year-old right-to-know law, which already is considered the weakest in the nation.

In the state Senate, a bill is being advanced that would generally improve the state's open-records law. But in the House, a bill that started out with the support of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) and several good-government groups was amended in a 13-hour session earlier this month to the point that it is now viewed as a step backward in terms of giving the public greater access to the workings of government.

Prior to the recent holiday weekend, there was some movement in the House to abandon the flawed right-to-know legislation and reintroduce a bill that more closely resembles the Senate version, which continues to have broad support, even though some critics argue it does not give the state a best-in-the-nation law.

Given the lousy track record of the General Assembly when it comes to openness and honesty, Deborah Musselman, lobbyist for the PNA, was correct in saying, "If it does what it's described to do, in a way that doesn't cause problems, we would be very pleased. But we've got to look at the language."

Musselman is right to be suspicious when it comes to details in legislation produced by the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

Her caution regarding fine print is justifiable, given the clear preference for secrecy revealed in the massive list of exemptions approved in committee. The House has been widely — and rightly — criticized for starting with a reasonable bill to improve the open-records law, then amending it beyond recognition with exemptions.

The House shifted the presumption to assume government documents are public, which is what good-government groups have long advocated. But then it added so many exemptions as to make the so-called flipping of presumptionmeaningless.

The flawed House version would exempt all e-mail communication, thus inviting any questionable business in the future to be done via e-mail. The open-records law pending in the House also would not take effect until sometime in 2009, a delay that cannot be reasonably justified. In a related and equally indefensible move, the House bill would exempt all pre-existing documents.

An effective open-records law is fundamental to the ability of the media and the public to follow what governmental agencies are doing and how they are spending taxpayers' money.

There is no shortage of examples where a public agency sought to shield its activities from public view. One recent story that generated numerous headlines revealed how the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency went to court, spending $400,000 on legal fees, to prevent public disclosure of details of its spending $800,000 for members of its board of directors to stay at luxury resorts.

If reform is going to happen in Harrisburg, an improved open-records law is an essential part of the process.

Whatever version of a new open-records law that emerges from the General Assembly next month will reveal whether state lawmakers are moving away from the culture of secrecy, entitlement and arrogance that has prevailed in Harrisburg for far too long.