As GOP legislative leaders argue that "more transparency" in their public business is better than campaign donation limits or banning lobbyist gifts, it appears secret bill draftings are on the rise on Capitol Hill.

Although it is a long-held practice, allowing secret bills to pop up late in a legislative session "is horrible for the public," said citizen activist Claire Geddes.

"We already have such a short general session — just 45 days — if a bill is not filed publicly (early on) we don't have time to react," said Geddes, who has hounded the Legislature for years on any number of issues, many consumer-related.

But legislative leaders say letting a lawmaker open a bill file in secret serves several purposes — and in the end the public "has plenty of opportunity" to read and comment on all bills before they are dealt with in an open committee hearing and floor action.

Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse, and House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara — both advocates of more transparency in state government — said there are cases when a legislator wants to keep a bill private to give him time to talk to interested parties, get educated on the subject himself and perhaps work out compromises that will make the bill better legislation.

"It's time to craft something, make it better" before it is made public, Clark said. "It is not intended to keep something away from people seeing it."

The deadline for all 104 legislators to list their top three bill-drafting priorities is Dec. 1. That prioritizing allows overworked legislative attorneys and researchers to better manage the flow of bill-writing assignments, while giving a somewhat equal shot for each legislator to get priority bills written in time for consideration by the January-February general session. A priority bill can be either a secret or open bill.

While leading lawmakers are looking at more quickly reporting campaign donations online and making other ethics reforms, there has been no discussion on changing how any unknown number of bills each year are kept secret — made public only if the measures are finally introduced, but never mentioned if sponsors decide to let them quietly die.

Ticking off several bills she fought "at the last minute" because they were released late in the session, Geddes said, "I can't but believe that they were held (in secret) for the wrong reasons."

Legislators can open secret or public bill files months before the late-January session starts. Public bill files are listed on the Legislature's Web site.