The timing of Pennsylvania receiving a C-minus grade in a national ranking of states’ corruption and transparency ratings was appropriate.

In the same week as the Center for Public Integrity ranked Pennsylvania 19th in the nation when it comes to preventing corruption and conducting a transparent state government, several current and former state lawmakers are making news in public corruption trials.

State Sen. Jane Orie, a Republican representing the North Hills, testified in her trial this week on charges that she used state resources and legislative staffers on her re-election campaign. It’s her second trial and she now faces additional charges of perjury over documents that appear to have been forged warning staffers to not do campaign work while on state time.

On the same day that Orie was testifying in her corruption trial, news came that former Pennsylvania House Speaker John Perzel was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in spending $10 million of state taxpayer funds to buy computer hardware and software to analyze voter data to help Republicans get re-elected.

Perzel, who represented a district north of Philadelphia, served more than 30 years in the House and was known as an effective fundraiser and powerful lawmaker. In addition to his prison sentence, Perzel has been ordered to pay $1 million in restitution.

Within 24 hours of Perzel’s sentencing, it was announced that former state Sen. Robert Mellow would plead guilty on April 27 to similar corruption charges of using Senate staff and resources for campaign work and fundraising. Mellow, the former Democratic leader of the state Senate, also has been charged by federal prosecutors with filing false income tax returns. Mellow, 69, who served 40 years in the Senate, could face up to five years in prison.

Only a few weeks before Orie, Perzel and Mellow were making headlines, former state Rep. Mike Veon, D-Beaver, was found guilty of corruption charges related to misuse of state funds directed to a nonprofit agency he created and ran called the Beaver Initiative for Growth (BIG).

Veon, another former House leader, came to his latest trial from prison, where he is serving a 6- to 14-year sentence for his role in Bonusgate, the scheme that used state taxpayer money to pay legislative staffers for their campaign work, mostly for House Democrats.

A short time before Veon was convicted in his second corruption trial, state Rep. Bill DeWeese of Greene County was convicted of using state resources, staff and funds for his re-election efforts. Despite his conviction on corruption charges, DeWeese plans an appeal and is running for re-election, noting that his conviction does not bar him from serving in the Legislature — until he is sentenced.

Veon’s trial on misusing BIG funds was similar to the federal corruption trial of former state Sen. Vince Fumo, D-Philadelphia, who was convicted of misusing nearly $4 million of state resources for his own personal and political benefit. Fumo, a longtime Philadelphia powerbroker, also was convicted of misusing funds of a nonprofit agency that he created and ran, along with a former legislative aide, who also was convicted on corruption charges.

Fumo is remembered for his preference for spending “OPM,” or other people’s money, whenever possible. That same motto could be attached to most other Harrisburg corruption-charge targets from Bonusgate and Veon’s role in BIG, to DeWeese and Orie. The Public Integrity survey gave the state a C-minus grade, which raises questions about how bad things must be in Georgia and the seven other states to earn F grades.

Pennsylvania’s C-minus grade is “generous,” according to Tim Potts, co-founder of Democracy Rising PA, a good-government group. Potts added that the state should earn an F for enforcement, noting that lawmakers have slashed funding for the state Ethics Commission.

The high-profile corruption trials over the past two years would have most people believing that Harrisburg must be really changing, but Potts isused a warning about Harrisburg’s longtime culture of entitlement and secrecy, telling a Pittsburgh newspaper, “They’re just waiting ’til they can go back to the old ways of doing things.”

Potts argues that this state’s lack of limits on campaign contributions and the awarding of no-bid contracts are problems, creating a pay-to-play culture.

The steady stream of corruption trials, convictions and sentencings should remind voters how important it is to pay attention to happenings in Harrisburg.