Many people were not surprised to hear this week that state lawmakers made a few mistakes in passing a measure to reform the slot machine gambling law and also a long-overdue lobbyist-disclosure law. Pennsylvania's General Assembly has demonstrated a troubling habit of tackling difficult issues at the very last minute, often running legislative sessions well past midnight.

And in the case of reforming the state's slot machine gambling law and finally passing a lobbyist disclosure law, there really is no excuse for the latest foul-ups.

Lobbyist disclosure has been on the agenda for nearly four years, ever since the state Supreme Court declared a 1998 law regulating lobbyists to be unconstitutional — on something of a technicality. As a result, for three years, Pennsylvania has been the only state in the nation to not have lobbyist disclosure and reporting laws. Yet, Harrisburg lawmakers wait until the final hours of the final days to try to dot the i's and cross the t's.

Within days of passing the slot machine gambling law in 2004, it was clear that changes to the law would be necessary. Public outcry over allowing lawmakers to own up to 1 percent of a gambling interest was loud and clear. There also was a broad public rejection of the requirement that all casinos purchase slot machines from Pennsylvania-based middlemen — a provision that existed in no other state with slot machine gambling. And after most of the applicants for the new slot machine distributorships appeared to be either wealthy entrepreneurs or politically well-connected people, the public saw that the provision was not going to be a jobs creator, as it was being billed by supporters.

State lawmakers have had more than a year to fix the slot machine gambling law and almost four years to do something about lobbyist regulation and disclosure. Yet, there they were in yet another closed-door, late-night session — the same kind of scenario that produced the controversial pay-raise vote that took place at 2 a.m. on July 7, 2005.

Tim Potts, co-founder of Democracy Rising PA, noted this week that "This is Day 475 since the pay raise and they have done nothing to improve the quality of state government procedures."

In the case of gambling reform, the legislation voted on this week has been bouncing back and forth between the House and Senate for about a year. Each time, apparently, pet provisions are inserted by a member of either the House or the Senate, only to be removed by the other chamber before it is returned for further rehashing.

Many people are not surprised that mistakes or "clerical errors" were made with lawmakers cramming such important legislation into the final hours of the final days of the year. More than a few others, however, made cynical by the pay-raise scandal, suspect the so-called errors that have delated these two bills from becoming law are actually intentional and nothing more than a technique to kill both lobbyist reporting and reforms to the state's gambling law.

Whatever the reason for this week's failures, the General Assembly has clearly had enough time to get it right when it comes to lobbyist regulation and reform of the slot machine gambling law. The current crop of lawmakers in Harrisburg, particularly the leadership of both parties, is simply not getting the job done.

But with the approaching Election Day, voters have the opportunity to send men and women to Harrisburg who will get the job done.