If this is the best the state Legislature can do, it’s time to end lame-duck sessions. In at least two critical areas, Ohioans have been badly served by their elected representatives this week.

• Despite the generally dismal performance of charter schools in Ohio, the Senate passed a bill that would allow another 98 charter schools to open. And despite throwing the gates open wider, senators failed to include in the bill the kinds of oversight of online charter schools that the state requires of public schools.

Online charter schools are in as much trouble as bricks-and-mortar charter schools, if not more trouble, but legislators said sorry, we don’t have enough time to study the oversight requirements proposed by the state Department of Education. They’ve known about the proposal since July.

• Lack of time was no problem for the Senate when it came to ending electronic filing of campaign finance reports by candidates. Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Brookville, introduced the amendment Tuesday night, He said that using a computer is just too difficult and time-consuming for some candidates.

It’s probably just coincidence that electronic filing, which now affects only statewide candidates, would have been required of candidates for the House and Senate starting in January.

Not only would the change have violated the spirit and possibly the letter of the state’s public-records laws, it also would have penalized the very candidates Jacobson claims to want to help, by raising the filing fee. The House wisely rejected the bill.

We do have the Senate to thank for something. On Wednesday, senators unanimously rejected House changes to a medical malpractice bill that would have required the state Department of Insurance to figure out how to tax Ohioans for a portion of jury awards in malpractice cases.

Sen. Lynn R. Wachtmann, R-Napoleon, got it exactly right: “This is the worst policy I have ever seen done here in 18 years.”

The competition was stiff, though.

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