When they passed their big middle-of-the-night pay raise a year ago, state lawmakers never fathomed the ramifications of that vote.

Unlike short-lived voter unhappiness in the past over certain issues, the voter outrage bursting forth from that greedy compensation action has remained, dashing the cocky, do-what-we-please, self-serving attitude that already years before had become firmly entrenched — firmly entrenched under lawmakers whose stay in Harrisburg had been extended for too many years by the voters.

Now, having witnessed the wrath of the voters, who in November chose not to retain a state Supreme Court justice and nearly ousted a second, and in May voted out 15 incumbent lawmakers who voted for the raise, lawmakers have decided that they need a "face-lift" prior to the November general election.

In hopes of accomplishing that, they have decided to slightly reduce their generous perks in hopes of proving to the voters that they have gotten the message that things must change in the state capital.

Beginning Sept. 1, senators no longer will have a $600 monthly allowance to put toward a car of their choice. In place of the allowance, they will be able to lease a car from the state fleet for about $300 a month or use their own vehicle and charge taxpayers for what presumably will be on-the-job mileage.

Additionally, beginning Sept. 15, the 50 senators and their roughly 1,000 employees may begin paying 1 percent of their salary toward health insurance premiums.

Members of the state House also were reported to be considering at least a change to their vehicle benefit.

While the moves are noteworthy, since there never has been a push among Pennsylvania lawmakers for givebacks, the efforts still don't go far enough in terms of what is needed to markedly change the General Assembly for the better. For starters, senators also should give up their per diem allowances while in session and replace them with payments for actual expenses — verifiable with receipts.

The per diem system amounts to putting thousands of dollars of extra pay in lawmakers' pockets, even if their actual expenses are only a fraction of that amount.

Sen. Robert C. Jubelirer, R-Blair, the Senate's president pro tempore, who was one of those defeated for re-election in May, said the revisions weren't geared toward mollifying the still-angry voters or to help the prospects of incumbents in the general election.

"It's to improve the legislature's image," Jubelirer said. "I think it's the legislature itself in the sense that we want to be more parallel with what the private sector does. We're trying to make reforms that represent that."

The legislature then should put that statement to work in regard to the per diem pay and then extend that into other parts of the General Assembly's bloated benefits package.

For example, state residents who can't afford regular dental and medical procedures, or who have far less than comprehensive medical insurance coverage, shouldn't provide, by way of the taxes they pay, overly generous medical and dental coverage for lawmakers who campaigned for the right to serve their constituents, not the other way around?

Meanwhile, Jubelirer's statement about being more parallel with the private sector is humorous when compared with what lawmakers were saying in the aftermath of last summer's pay-raise vote. The talk then was how state lawmakers' pay should stack up against the pay of members of the United States Congress.

While the changes in the vehicle and health insurance benefits represent a postive start, the changes must not stop there. The state's taxpayers should continue to demand that the legislature abandon its royalty mind-set and accept the fact that lawmakers are employees of the people.

Ideally, a scale-back in benefits should be followed by whatever efforts are necessary to reduce the size of the legislature and to limit the length of routine legislative sessions, to make it more difficult for partisan politics to dominate the legislature.

When lawmakers departed from that middle-of-the-night session on July 7, 2005, many came away feeling richer. But the trepidation that has marked the year since then, as lawmakers realized that the negative fallout from that vote would not go away, despite their vote in November to repeal the pay hike, has proven to them that they in fact are now much poorer, at least in terms of their constituents' respect for them.

For that reason, lawmakers must not resort to cosmetic changes or a minor face-lift when considering the kind of changes that really are necessary in Harrisburg.