It’s hard to imagine that our opinion of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly could dip any lower. But here we are, with less than two weeks until the new year kicks off, spiraling down yet another rabbit hole of “wait, they did WHAT?” proportions.

Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale seemed to capture the public’s reaction on Wednesday, when he issued this statement:

“It is outrageous that the public is just now learning that the House of Representatives used more than half a million dollars of taxpayer money since 2007 to settle claims by employees.”

Nearly half of that — $248,000 — was spent to settle a single sexual harassment complaint in 2015 against Rep. Thomas Caltagirone, D-Bucks.

DePasquale is correct: using taxpayer money in this fashion is unconscionable and reprehensible. It must stop immediately, and prohibitions against using public funds in this way must be written into law.

To that end, a package of bills being sponsored by a group of female legislators should be among the General Assembly’s top priorities in 2018. The bills would, among other things, ban non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases involving legislators, and would prohibit lawmakers from using public money to settle sexual harassment claims.

The first issue is that any public money at all was used in this fashion. The second is the fact that this money was spent secretly, and that many of the settlements it was used to craft included non-disclosure agreements designed to protect the reputations of misbehaving lawmakers.

And not only was the public kept in the dark about these payments, it appears some legislators were as well.

According to DePasquale, who served as a state legislator in the House from 2007 to 2013, many members, including him, were unaware of the settlements until now.

If there’s a more powerful example of the importance of transparency in government, we’re hard-pressed to find it. Because there is simply no way these taxpayer-funded settlements would have been green-lit by caucus leaders had they been public knowledge.

By late 2007 Pennsylvania was just starting to feel the pinch of the greatest economic collapse of our era: the Great Recession.

People’s retirements and their golden years were ruined; families became homeless; the state’s rainy day fund was decimated.

Meanwhile, House Democrats were busy secretly siphoning off public money to help protect misbehaving colleagues.

Since 2007 the caucus has paid $600,000 to settle four complaints against legislators, according to news media reports citing an itemized list complied by the state’s Bureau of Risk and Insurance Management.

The way forward on this matter could not be more clear.

First, any lawmaker whose conduct resulted in a taxpayer-funded settlement for claims of harassment should immediately resign and pledge to repay any public money used in the deal.

Gov. Tom Wolf, who has called on both Caltagirone and state Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery County, to resign in the wake of more recent allegations of improper behavior toward female staffers, is on the right track here.

Second, legislators should take up DePasquale on his offer and turn over their books — financial and policy — for review. That would likely require lawmakers to pass a law giving DePasquale the authority to audit them, but it should be done with all haste.

There’s little reason to believe either chamber, or any caucus, in the General Assembly is capable of conducting an internal review that satisfies the public’s expectation of transparency and best practices.

Rep. Caltagirone and Sen. Leach are surely not the only offenders in Harrisburg. This is not a Democrat problem or a Republican problem. It is a culture problem.

The only way to change that culture is to draw back the shades and remind our lawmakers that there are still good people willing to speak out against this despicable conduct.