It’s a disturbing revelation: The corruption probe in 2007 that jailed Mike Veon and convicted 21 other legislative leaders and staffers has spawned no new rules to prevent such sins in the future.

Veon, the longtime Democratic whip from Beaver County, was released on parole last week from Laurel Highlands State Prison after five years behind bars. He was convicted of using tax money to pay bonuses to state workers for political activity, illegal campaign fundraising and the misuse of state funds at a nonprofit he once ran.

A few days from now, former Rep. Brett Feese of Lycoming County will be paroled. A former district attorney and House Republican whip, Feese served three years and three months for his role in hiring out-of-state consultants with public funds and diverting legislative employees for Republican Party political work.

Veon and Feese are the last to be freed from prison, having received the stiffest penalties among the 22 people who were convicted or pleaded guilty in a corruption investigation that became widely known as Bonusgate.

Others who served prison time included former House speakers John Perzel, a Republican, and Bill DeWeese, a Democrat, and state Sen. Vince Fumo, once the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. A federal jury convicted Fumo on 137 counts of corruption. He served four years in federal prison and remains on home confinement.

Yet despite the widespread convictions of high-ranking political officials, the scandal produced no major reforms of Pennsylvania’s obviously weak laws for official conduct.

In a big way, the inaction says we’re all happy with the status quo — or that we’ve simply grown to accept it.

One chief weakness is that elected officials and their underlings can accept gifts. Lawmakers are allowed accept anything — lavish meals, airline junkets, golf outings, tickets to sporting events — from anyone interested in influencing them, as long as they are disclosed in quarterly reports to the state.

A state Ethics Act and an ethics commission have been in existence since 1979 but neither bans these gifts.

A ban on gifts for all public officials would be a good starting point for reform. It’s already the rule for Gov. Tom Wolf and his administration — a strict gift ban was the governor’s first executive order.

The Bonusgate conspirators went far beyond the receiving of political gifts — they took tax dollars and distributed them as bonuses to reward loyal staffers for political campaign work.

In either case, the bonuses and other gifts are intended to curry favor with political cronies. Both should be prohibited by the state Ethics Act.

— T.A.H.