Recent weeks have seen two senators caught up in scandals over disclosure of their personal finances. Senator Allen, a Republican of Virginia, failed to disclose stock options he held in a technology company that at one point were worth $1.1 million. Senator Reid of Nevada, the top Democrat in the Senate, was found by the Associated Press to have failed to disclose fully a land deal that eventually yielded him a $1.1 million profit.

It may have led some New Yorkers to hope to take a look at the financial disclosure forms of their own state senators and assemblymen, the ones that serve in Albany. Unfortunately, those forms, unlike the ones in Washington, are basically useless. They include nothing even close to the detailed information that is available about members of Congress. Even the few details that are included on the Albany forms are mostly kept secret from the general public, by laws the Albany politicians passed so that they could keep their own finances private.

Even the most detailed forms and most stringent public disclosure requirements are no protection against a politician who, whether through neglect or intentional deception, fails to disclose what is required.Yet in the case of the Washington politicians, the required disclosure was detailed enough for enterprising reporters to discover the errors. It’s no secret that the speaker of the assembly, Sheldon Silver, is affiliated with the plaintiffs’ law firm Weitz & Luxenberg. But a New Yorker seeking to learn how much he is paid by that firm or how he has invested those funds would be, essentially, out of luck. Most politicians are honest and go into government to serve the public rather than themselves, but if that’s so, what’s the harm in changing the rules to hold Albany politicians to national standards of disclosure?