It sometimes can sound quaint coming from "good government" groups, but few will argue against the adage that "sunlight is the best disinfectant."

For Pennsylvanians who have been paying attention to the state legislature for the past several years, shining more sunshine on government activities is perhaps more necessary at the state level than at the federal level.

This week marks "National Sunshine Week,"and much of the attention is on Congress, where changes to the Freedom of Information Act are being considered. But here in Pennsylvania the need for more sunlight shining on elected officials and more public access to government activities and spending are equally critical.

The growing list of scandals coming out of Harrisburg would have been less likely to have happened if lawmakers had not been able to operate in the dark and shield so much of what they do from the media and the public.

If more sunshine was getting through in Harrisburg, the controversial pay-raise vote of 2005 probably would not have happened because the public would have known about it before the 2 a.m. vote. Instead of outrage after the vote and repeal several months later, the bill would never have been passed if the public had known what was in the works.

The same can be said for the so-called pension-grab vote of 2001. If the public had known that lawmakers were planning to increase their already-generous pensions by 50 percent, the public outcry would have prevented the vote — and would have eliminated the financial burden that is predicted to hit school districts across the state with massive spending increases.

More sunlight in Harrisburg would have made it more difficult for state Sen. Vincent Fumo to use staffers for his personal and political gain, as has been alleged in a recently filed federal indictment. More sunlight also might have prevented the use of a nonprofit organization for Fumo's personal benefit — another practice alleged in the indictment.

More sunlight, in the form of access to all spending records in the legislature, might have prevented the secretive awarding of about $3.6 million in year-end bonuses to top legislative staffers, many of whom also did political work for their bosses.

More transparency, or sunlight, in Harrisburg might have helped prevent the awarding of no-bid contracts by lawmakers to their former staffers and political friends. Such contracts, according to John Baer, a columnist with the Philadelphia Daily News, amounted to $2.7 million — spent by the state Senate alone in the final months of 2006 and early 2007.

No-bid contracts and cushy jobs to friends, relatives and political cronies are part of a patronage system that is legendary at quasi-governmental agencies such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. John Hanger, chief executive of PennFuture, has called the Turnpike Commission a "patronage pit."

More sunshine, and more transparency, focused on hiring and spending practices at the Turnpike Commission and other agencies, would help clean up these organizations, which have operated in the shadows for too long.

Reacting to voter anger stemming from the pay-raise vote and subsequent scandals such as per-diem abuses and the Fumo indictment, state lawmakers have for weeks been talking about comprehensive reform. Proposed changes to the House's internal rules are meant to make the legislative body more transparent and accountable to the public. Gov. Ed Rendell has hopped on the reform bandwagon by proposing improvements to the state's Right-to-Know Law that would make nearly all government records accessible to the public.

Many of the proposed changes have merit — but so far it's just talk. Making changes to internal House rules falls short of making tough new laws that could not be suspended, as any House rules can be.

The 2005 pay-raise scandal began the exposure of Harrisburg as an ethical swamp. Too many entrenched lawmakers have operated behind a shroud of secrecy, spending taxpayers' money in ways that would not happen if their actions were exposed to public scrutiny — that's sunshine. That culture must change. And the most recent election cycle, in which a record number of lawmakers either retired or were defeated, suggests that it can change.

Talk of reform and more sunlight is good. But it's still too early to determine if the talk coming out of Harrisburg is just talk — and if the culture of entitlement, arrogance and secrecy really is changing.