Every once in a while the Montana Legislature slips up — not in passing a law that some of us don’t like (that happens all the time), but in passing a law that fails to do what lawmakers themselves had intended. Another such goof came to light this week.

During the 2007 session, legislators were in agreement that “constituency accounts” had to go. The idea behind the accounts was to provide a place into which politicians could place unused campaign money or cash from other sources in order to provide services to their constituents. The problem was that such funds had no oversight, and the money could be used for practically any purpose without reporting requirements.

But now, according to State Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth, it turns out that the law that legislators passed only affects new constituency accounts, not the many such accounts in existence prior to the legislation.

“It was the clear intent of the Legislature to regulate all constituency accounts, to prevent these unregulated slush funds from continuing to erode the public trust in our elected officials,” state Sen. Roy Brown, a Republican candidate for governor, told the Associated Press.

Anyone who has been around a legislative session knows that lawmakers and their staff work extremely hard to get things right, and that they usually do. But mistakes made during the long hours and pressure-cooker atmosphere of a 90-day session are hardly surprising.

Obvious solutions might be to lengthen the session or divide it into two parts with different agendas, in order to ease the hectic pace. But such suggestions always have fallen on deaf ears because most lawmakers aren’t interested in a “full-time” Legislature.

And it’s not as though all is lost when a mistake is made. There’s always another session coming up.