An agreement on a new state budget was worked out over the weekend and announced at 1 a.m. Monday. Though details remain to be worked out, the late-night agreement averted a furlough of state workers, a consequence of last year's failure to meet the June 30 budget deadline.

Though there does not appear to have been any midnight mischief, the 1 a.m. budget deal was a reminder of other late-night sessions in the General Assembly, with decidedly less-welcome outcomes.

The now-infamous 2 a.m. pay-raise vote of July 2005 is best known. That action sparked outrage across the state and helped fuel a reform movement that has pushed transparency and accountability in Harrisburg.

Another, less-well-known late-night deal occurred in 1996. At that time, the subject was deregulation of the state's electricity market, something again being debated now, as rate caps are soon to be expiring. There is discussion about why the effort to create a more competitive electricity market and lower rates failed — and what to do about it.

But the way in which the electric market was deregulated in the state is instructive — and another example of how Harrisburg used to conduct business.

In an extensive report on how deregulation of the electricity market came to Pennsylvania, the Allentown Morning Call described the legislative effort that launched the process.

Taking readers back to 1996, the newspaper article began, "Pushed by Enron and crafted behind closed doors, the 84-page measure to deregulate Pennsylvania's electric industry was slipped into a bill that called for only a one-word change to the state's taxicab law."

Though the vote to approve the deregulation plan was taken at 4 a.m., just days before the Legislature's "lame duck" session would end in November, it is not clear that today's problems of soon-to-expire rate caps and lack of competition in the electricity market would be any different had the legislation followed more appropriate procedures.

Deregulation of electricity has been tried by other states but, so far, lower rates have not been seen. So, this state's failed attempt to deregulate the electricity market might not be unique, but the way in which state legislators launched the experiment probably is.

The Morning Call's article described the actions in Harrisburg on Nov. 18, 1996, a week before the lame duck session would end. "That day, lawmakers got started on their makeover of House Bill 1509, the taxicab bill."

The article explained that the taxicab bill involved changing the length of time that a taxicab permit would be valid — to eight years from six years. That simple change was the intent of H.B. 1509.

The Morning Call's article goes on to describe the transformation process for H.B. 1509. "It was during the next 48 hours, in the hands of a Senate committee, that the bill would become as long as a novella and get its new name: 'The Electricity Generation Customer Choice and Competition Act.' "

The idea of introducing competition to the electricity market was a reasonable action for state government. And just because it has not produced the desired results does not mean that it cannot happen with some additional changes. But the way in which the state Legislature in 1996 passed the landmark measure had the same characteristics of other bills passed in the middle of the night and under such time pressure that most lawmakers would not have had time to read, let alone understand, the legislation. Examples include the pay-raise vote of 2005, the so-called pension grab of 2001 and slot-machine legalization.

Unlike those examples, there had been public debate over deregulating the electricity market, so the idea was not something sprung on an unsuspecting public. But the process of stripping another, unrelated bill and inserting many pages of details on a new topic clearly violated the state's constitution.

The method by which it was approved might not have played a role in the failure of electricity deregulation in Pennsylvania. But last weekend's late-night budget agreement, though not actual passage of legislation, was a reminder of the bad old days in Harrisburg.

The media and the public must remain alert to ensure that the practices of those days are not repeated. The 2 a.m. pay-raise vote was an unintended gift to the public from arrogant, self-serving lawmakers.

That gift should never be forgotten.