HARRISBURG — For a year that rang in heightened expectations of government reform in Pennsylvania, 2007 is retreating with a whimper.

What advocates hope will be the first overhaul of the state's weak Right-to-Know Law in a half-century is bogged down in a dispute over details. Legislation to limit how much money donors may give to state and local political candidates has gone nowhere. So has a plan to replace the election of appellate judges with a system in which the governor appoints them from a prescreened list.

With little dissent, the House and Senate did revise their internal rules to make the legislative process more transparent. They imposed an 11 p.m. curfew for daily sessions, banned taxpayer-financed leasing of private vehicles for legislators and slowed the parliamentary process to give members more time to digest last-minute amendments to bills.

"I believe we've had more reform in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the last 12 months than we have since the War of 1812," said House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene.

"We have a much different process than when I first got here," agreed Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware. "It's much more open, it's much more transparent, it's much more deliberate, it's easier for people to follow, if they care to follow it."

Reform was the battle cry when the Legislature was seated in January. Many of the 55 new members — one of the largest freshman contingents in state history — were elected on promises to clean up Harrisburg in the wake of the pay-raise scandal of 2005.

But the fact remains that months of hearings and discussion produced no sweeping changes in the state's arcane political culture this year.

"They did no heavy lifting," said Terry Madonna, a professor and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. "If they've done anything, the voters have missed it."

Would-be reformers stress that this is only the halfway point in the Legislature's two-year session and insist significant progress is possible — in the election year ahead. Others quibble over what qualifies as "reform," and what is merely change for the sake of change.