What we don't know about lobbying in Harrisburg is just about everything, but we do know is that it isn't cheap.

For instance, the gambling lobbyists, who successfully persuaded the Legislature that what the commonwealth needs most are more chances to shake down its suckers, spent nearly $11 million between January 2003 and June 2005 courting the state's 50 senators.

At least that's what the lobbyists reported. Some of that money almost certainly was spent courting the governor's office and the 203-member House as well, but we'll never know how much.

Neither Gov. Ed Rendell nor the state House requires lobbyists to register. The state House is "the only legislative body in America with no registration of lobbyists whatsoever,'' says Tim Potts of Democracy Rising Pennsylvania, which helped lead the successful battle to rescind the lawmakers' pay raise.

Rating lobbyist disclosure on a scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Potts said, "I'd give the Senate a 3, and the governor and the House deserve a zero."

In a year when Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty plea to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials has exposed the toxic effect of loose money, Pennsylvania mostly works without a net.

Even the information we get from Harrisburg is a muddle, more a tease than a full report. Lobbyists reporting activity to the Senate might be including expenses they incurred courting the Rendell administration or House members. We won't know.

Details are too scant to know which lobbyist took which senator down to the Harrisburg Trough 'n' Brew on the dark side of the turnpike for a big dinner. Only if a lobbyist spends more than $250 on a single gift or drops $650 through the year sucking up to one senator, does that singular fact makes its way to a report.

What we get instead is an aggregate number of dollars spent lobbying, and we get that only for the lobbyists' work on the Senate. We know that the gambling interests reported spending nearly $700,000 from Jan. 1, 2003, through the first half of 2005 on "Section 3 expenses," which is defined as "any gift, entertainment, meal, transportation or lodging."

If a reporter tries the obvious next step and divides that dollar figure by 50 senators, the very flimsiness of the report can be used as a shield. Because nobody can say if all that money was used to lobby the Senate.

"I can't say if it's 75 percent Senate, 12 percent House and 12 percent governor's office,'' said Drew Crompton, counsel to Senate President Pro Tem Robert Jubelirer of Altoona. "We're giving you a gross amount. It's all state government. I'm not sure if real people really care what percentage is Senate versus House.''

Mr. Crompton is right in the narrow sense. How the money gets split is not the citizenry's chief concern. A lobbyist working the capitol might schmooze a senator, a rep and a governor's aide in the same hallway. How that's broken down isn't so important. Citizens just want to know what's going on in their name. They have no reason to believe they do.

Mr. Crompton also suggests dividing the dollar figure by 50 senators ignores the reality "that all of you have bemoaned, " which is that only a handful of people run the show in Harrisburg.

"The rank and file don't get lobbied as much as the leadership does,'' he said.

House Speaker John Perzel, R-Philadelphia, has said that the news media are the only ones interested in lobbyist spending. But then Mr. Perzel made similar claims about the pay raise right up until the moment he caved and voted for repeal.

Bill DeWeese, the House Democratic Leader from Waynesburg, can't muster a majority vote for anything, so when he says the right things about lobbyist reform, it doesn't mean much. Still, Mr. DeWeese says reform is coming, though he's more interested in cleaning up campaign finance.

"There are 10 to 20 greenbacks'' being contributed to lawmakers' campaign war chests for every dollar used to take them out to dinner, Mr. DeWeese said. "That's the most pernicious element in the body politic.''

We don't know enough about America's Largest Full-Time State Legislature, and too much of what we know isn't good.