A Lebanon County judge's approval of a motion by PACleanSweep to dissolve must not erode the positive impact that the group has had on Pennsylvania politics.

Because of the efforts of reform-minded groups such as PACleanSweep, Democracy Rising PA and RockTheCapital, a record number of incumbents were defeated for party nominations in the May 16 primary elections, including the top two leaders of the state Senate.

It is to be hoped that more incumbents will lose their seats in the Nov. 7 general election, and that many new faces will be a product of the 2008 legislative elections.

PACleanSweep merits praise for helping to wake up the state's voters regarding what really was happening in the state capital. It's been common knowledge for years — actually, for decades — that partisan politics has been hampering expeditious action on important issues.

But it was the big, outrageous, middle-of-the-night legislative pay raise on July 7, 2005, that triggered state residents' outrage against "serving-for-me" lawmakers and was the egg from which PACleanSweep and the other reform groups hatched.

After its formation, PACleanSweep recruited about 100 legislative candidates to seek office by way of an anti-pay-raise message. While the group's efforts didn't achieve the level of success that founder Russ Diamond had sought, and despite the friction that eventually evolved within the group over the group's direction, PACleanSweep's impact on state politics should not be downplayed.

The message has been delivered loud and clear in the legislature that the people want public servants, not servants of self.

"This is not the end of the movement," Diamond said. "Rather, this is simply an adjustment in the way the group operates."

The judge's action dissolves the corporate structure of the group, not the ideas and goals on which the group was built.

If state residents remain as interested in their government as they've been over the past 13 months, PACleanSweep's influence will remain, despite its departure from the reform-advocacy spotlight.