In a win for transparency and better-run government, the state’s Office of Open Records issued a ruling Thursday that we hope helps reign in a bumbling start for Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana application process.

In case you missed it, state officials launched the first round of grower-processor applications in June, and promptly fell flat on their faces — refusing the name the people charged with vetting and scoring the applications, and ultimately releasing documents so heavily-redacted as to be nearly-useless in many cases.

The office’s ruling came in response to an appeal by the Patriot-News, which is one of several news outlets across Pennsylvania that have challenged the state’s handling of the first round of grower-processor applications for Pennsylvania’s fledging medical marijuana industry.

The ruling is important because the determinations could force the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf to release more information about the grower-processor applications.

Two specific pieces from the Patriot-News ruling are particularly encouraging:

The state must provide the names, hometowns and contact information for all owners, financial backers and key operators of the firms named in the newspaper’s appeal.

Officials must also revise redactions to grower-processor applications that blacked-out entire sections dealing with the companies’ operations — with the exception of building and security plans for the facilities.

We’ve written previously about our dim view of the state’s handling of this process. Not only does Pennsylvania continue to keep secret the names of the panel of so-called “experts” who vetted the grower-processor applications despite a separate ruling by the OOR in September, it allowed the applicants themselves to redact the documents before they were released to the general public.

That resulted in no consistency among the applications that were released, and documents that at best were only partially useful.

At its worst and most ridiculous, the process resulted in documents being released with fully blacked-out pages, and applications that redacted the names of major investors and the people in charge of daily operations.

One document was reportedly released with the name of the applying company itself blacked out.

Why state officials thought it was a good idea to allow applicants to redact information themselves is anyone’s guess. But the result was plain to see: documents that served little purpose and failed to provide vital information.

The public deserves to have the tools to make their own determination about these applicants and their business plans, and it is our hope that this latest OOR ruling results in more transparency from the state’s Office of Medical Marijuana.