Pennsylvania's state lawmakers can make mischief anytime they are in session. The notorious 2 a.m. pay-raise vote of July 2005 and the 2001 pension grab in which lawmakers boosted their own pension benefits by 50 percent are the most notable examples. But, more often than not, the three weeks following legislative elections, known as lame-duck sessions, are when lawmakers tend to pass controversial measures.

This year, at least, Pennsylvanians will not have to wonder what kind of troubling news will come out of Harrisburg in late November, when some lawmakers who have lost bids for re-election, or who are retiring, can pass bills without fear of voter reaction.

The state Senate announced recently that it will not conduct a lame-duck session this year. And since the Senate will not be doing business after the November election and before the new year, the House is effectively barred from having its own lame-duck session, since both bodies are required to pass legislation before it can move to the governor and become law.

In recent lame-duck sessions, lawmakers have approved measures to allow casinos to serve free liquor and to spend taxpayers' dollars on sports stadiums.For years, lame-duck sessions also included discussions about legislative pay raises.

Pennsylvania, along with only 11 other states, allows for lame-duck sessions by not limiting when legislative sessions can be held. But according to the National Conferences of State Legislatures, not all of the 12 states that permit lame-duck sessions actually hold them.

For Pennsylvania's famously dysfunctional General Assembly, such after-election sessions have become a biennial tradition, reserved for controversial issues likely to anger voters. It has been reported that 30 percent of all nonappropriations bills that became law in the 1990s were passed in these brief, every-other-year sessions.

Lame-duck sesions are a well-documented time for mischief by defeated or retiring lawmakers, and even returning lawmakers have seen the political benefit of taking a tough vote a full two years prior to the next election, hoping voters will forget.

There have been several attempts to pass bills that would amend the state constitution to ban post-election sessions, but the bills became stuck in committee.

Cynical voters might note that a constitutional amendment might not be enough, given the fact that lawmakers are barred by the state constitution from voting themselves a pay raise and accepting the increased salary in the same legislative term, yet they did exactly that with increases to their "unvouchered expenses"following the 2005 pay-raise vote. That vote was later repealed.

So while the state Senate's move is welcome, it is only a first step.

Reform-minded groups have praised the move of ending lame-duck sessions. Barry Kaufman, executive director of Common Cause of Pennsylvania, said, "I think that's excellent; that's major progress." Kaufman added that Common Cause has long advocated that lawmakers' voting records, as well as the governor's record, should be complete before citizens go to the polls to vote — thus no post-election legislating.

Some lawmakers are suggesting that banning lame-duck sessions means that nearly all legislative business will have to be completed by budget time in late June or early July. Others have pointed to the fact that there are two months after lawmakers' summer recess to get work accomplished. But during election years, the years when lame-duck sessions are possible, those two months feature historically light schedules to allow lawmakers to campaign for re-election in their home districts.

Most lawmakers might not like it, but maybe a shortened summer recess would be an answer to accomplishing work not done by June 30, but which now cannot be tackled in November.

Banning lame-duck sessions is a first step toward greater accountability to voters. Seeing how lawmakers react to the new schedule — and how they adjust their legislative session schedules and possibly reduce their two-month summer holiday — will also be instructive.