After another unproductive year, made worse by campaign distractions of the off-year election, some state lawmakers are saying they want to cast votes between now and the end of the month in what is commonly referred to as a lame- duck session.

Harrisburg leaders say there will be no lame-duck session this year. Yet, 70 House members appeared on the House floor Monday to criticize their leaders for not allowing post-election votes. Gov. Ed Rendell is also urging votes in the closing days of the legislative session.

Pennsylvanians, particularly taxpayers, should be worried when lawmakers talk about lame-duck sessions.

Following an election, the lawmakers who lost their bids for re-election are unaccountable to voters and might be inclined to vote in ways not in their constituents’ best interests.

The potential for mischief in a lame-duck session is tremendous and for that reason, most states ban them. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 11 states, including Pennsylvania, do not have limits on the length of legislative sessions.

Common Cause of PA makes the sensible argument that lawmakers should be judged at election time on their votes, meaning no votes should be taken after the election.

Taxpayers should wonder what sort of mischief had been planned in a lame-duck vote.

One possibility is what some have called a pension reform bill that deals with the looming tax increases facing school districts and property owners across the state.

Not enough is known about House Bill 2497, which is promoted as leveling out the predicted spike in tax increases necessary to boost funding for the two big pension funds for lawmakers, teachers and other state employees. HB 2497 would reduce tax increases in the next few years, but increase them even more in later years. Taxpayers should know the total cost of the changes. Some critics argue such a plan just kicks the can down the road.

Another proposed change in HB 2497 would roll back the multiplier used to calculate pension benefits for future enrollees. And while that is worth doing, it also is a reminder that an earlier multiplier adjustment was used by lawmakers in 2001 to boost their own pensions by 50 percent and those of teachers and other state workers by 25 percent.

The impact of that move was something few people understood at the time. Since then, it’s become clear the 2001 pension grab was far more egregious and costly to taxpayers than the 2005 pay-raise vote that caused such a firestorm of public protest that it was reversed.

Talking about the pension grab of 2001, Rendell was quoted as saying “We can’t afford it. It’s going to break the school districts and the state.”

He said it was worse than the pay raise vote, and he’s right.

When it comes to changes in state pensions for lawmakers and other state employees, taxpayers should fully understand what’s being considered. And a rushed lame-duck legislative session is not the time to deal with such a controversial issue.

Many taxpayers believe that real reform would roll back the 2001 pension grab and convert to 401(k)-style plans that cover most private sector workers.

These sorts of changes are more likely to happen in the next legislative session when more Republicans are in office and when Tom Corbett is governor. Maybe that’s behind the calls for a lame-duck session.

Talk of pension reform should include descriptions of what happened in 2001, when the pension plans had large surpluses thanks to the dot.com stock bubble. At that time, state lawmakers decided to grab the surplus for themselves. Instead of allowing the surplus to remain in case stock values declined, they took it in the form of higher retirement benefits. When the stock market sank soon after the pension grab, the resulting pension fund losses became the taxpayers’ problem.

A pension plan that allows beneficiaries to grab investment gains for themselves, but charge taxpayers for investment losses, is unfair and should end.

The state pension crisis should be dealt with in the sort of transparent setting that was absent in the 2001 pension grab vote. Such an important, complicated and potentially costly issue should never be decided in a lame-duck session.