Is it possible that Republicans are finally doing something about what Democrats like to call the “Republican culture of corruption” on Capitol Hill?

After a year of ferocious denials, Rep. Bob Ney decided last week that maybe he’d done something wrong after all.The Ohio Republican agreed to plead guilty to corruption charges stemming from favors he did for clients of the notorious Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.

The same day Mr. Ney’s plea agreement became public, House Republicans decided that maybe they’d gone overboard on this whole business of “earmarks” — the special-interest projects that congressmen and senators anonymously slip into legislation to benefit their most generous friends.

So the House passed a new procedural rule requiring that the sponsor of each such project be identified in the piece of legislation authorizing the expenditure or provision.

And there’s more. Congress also last week passed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which will establish a publicly accessible Internet database of federal expenditures.

Operated by the Office of Management and Budget, the Web site will list every entity that receives a government grant or contract — as well as the total amount each entity receives. By 2008, when it’s fully on line, the database will for the first time publicly account for almost $1 trillion in discretionary federal spending.

Skeptics were quick to point out that not all these developments are quite as hopeful as they appear.

Even Mr. Ney’s public apology failed to go beyond the ritualistic regret for unnamed “mistakes.” It was merely an excess of virtue and fellow-feeling, he suggested, that led him to exchange legislative favors for lavish trips and campaign contributions.

“Over the years I have worked to help others,” he said. “But now I am the one that needs help.”

More significant, despite the festival of self-congratulation that celebrated its passage, the earmark reform passed by the House has serious flaws.

“I’m not even sure I’d call it reform,” said a slightly disappointed Steve Ellis, vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington watchdog group that has helped draw attention to the problem of earmarks.

And no one should doubt that earmarks are a problem.

The last Democrat-controlled Congress, in 1994, loaded its 13 federal appropriations bills with 4,126 earmarks. In 2004, according to the Heritage Foundation, there were 14,404. Some estimates put the cost of these slippery appropriations at almost $60 billion a year.

The irrationality that earmarks encourage was aptly demonstrated by last year’s highway bill. The bill’s earmarks totaled roughly $23 billion, more than $1 billion of that went to the state of Alaska, whose lack of population — 660,000 — is more than compensated for by a savvy congressional delegation.

Meanwhile, according to one analysis of the bill, the city of Bakersfield, California, received more transportation earmarks than Los Angeles.

Distortions like these have at last become unignorable — so much so that even the Republican congressional leadership, which encouraged the distortions in the first place, felt compelled to act.

By requiring that earmarks be identified with the member who sponsored them, last week’s rule change strikes a blow for transparency. It will remove the secrecy that gives even the most innocent appropriation the appearance of sleazy collusion and self-dealing.

But — please don’t be shocked — there are loopholes. The rule change affects only those earmarked appropriations that go to a “nonfederal entity.”

Yet Mr. Ellis estimates that fully a third of earmarks are funneled through a federal entity. Appropriations are often made to the departments of Defense or Transportation to fund projects that will then benefit a single private company in the member’s district.

It was this kind of “laundering” that allowed the confessed felon Representative Randall “Duke” Cunningham to funnel $150 million in defense contracts to a private contractor, who showered him with (illegal) gratitude.

Any reform that leaves undisturbed the secrecy that encouraged Cunningham’s schemes can scarcely be considered a reform.

At the same time, the rule change takes aim at tax earmarks — changes in the tax code — that benefit a single private entity.

Yet tax manipulations are seldom directed at a single company. Far more common, and just as sleazy, are special treatments for entire industries that are locally concentrated. Several block and tackle manufacturers, for example, made a killing from special provisions slipped into the 2004 corporate tax bill by House Speaker, Dennis Hastert. They were lucky enough to be located in his district.

These loopholes suggest that a more-than-wholesome element of election-year gamesmanship has gone into the House’s reform, and they explain the disappointment of reformers like Mr. Ellis.

Even so, he prefers to look on the bright side. Especially with the new budget database, Washington is moving closer to complete transparency in how and why it spends money the way it does.

“This is Washington,” he says. “You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We’ll take this and come back next year and keep chipping away.”

We can admire Steve Ellis’s optimism — even as we wonder whether House Republicans will be so reform-minded next year, without a dangerous election bearing down on them.

Mr. Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.