Less than two weeks after the Senate’s new earmark rules took effect, critics are accusing Democrats of providing less openness than promised.

Only appropriations earmarks will be subject to challenge via points of order, not the abundant special provisions scattered through authorization bills. And a reading of the fine print shows that the public disclosure of earmark information, one of the big changes of the lobbying and ethics law (PL 110-81), doesn’t have to happen until a late stage in the legislative process.

“This is one of the most bald-faced bait and switches I’ve seen in Washington,” Steve Ellis, vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Monday.

“We have to have some shame,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who has been a thorn in the side of leadership in both parties on earmarking and federal spending issues. “We have to have some honor in this body.”

At DeMint’s insistence, the Senate leadership put in writing how challenges to earmarks will be handled under the new law.

The bottom line: Under a rule change included in the lobbying and ethics law, earmarks in appropriations conference reports can be challenged from the floor by raising points of order, but earmarks in conference reports on authorizing bills will not be subject to those objections.

When the lobbying and ethics bill was being debated, lawmakers and staffers said the earmark change would allow senators to challenge “airdropped” provisions — those that hadn’t appeared in the originally passed House or Senate versions of bills — in all kinds of legislation.

DeMint put that to the test Monday by trying to challenge provisions added in conference to the Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA (HR 1495).

The airdropped additions sent the bill to the floor with $23 billion in earmarked projects, far more than the $15 billion worth in the House-passed version or the $14 billion worth in the Senate-passed version.

“Unfortunately, these earmarks were not passed by either body in an open or transparent way,” DeMint said. “Instead, they were added behind closed doors, in the dark of night.”

DeMint was joined on the floor by Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who argued that the Army Corps of Engineers projects should be reviewed in public. “This isn’t about the projects, this is about the process,” McCaskill said. “This is about a bad habit.”

But in a written response to DeMint, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rules Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., drew a bright distinction between how the new rules apply to spending bills vs. goal-setting authorization bills like WRDA. It would take 60 votes to waive a point of order challenging an ­appropriations earmark, making it very difficult to keep the earmark in place. But authorizing provisions added in conference reports won’t face any additional challenge at all — just an up or down vote on the entire bill.

“The availability of a surgical point of order against a conference report represents an exception to the longstanding parliamentary principle that a conference report may not be amended,” Reid and Feinstein wrote. “But extension of the Rule XLIV point of order to authorizing language in conference reports is unwarranted and would thwart finality in the legislative process.”

When DeMint formally asked to challenge provisions under the new rule, Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., accused him of trying to delay important projects.

“The bottom line is every single project in this bill has a letter attached to it saying who asked for it,” Boxer said. “I would urge that we get on with this today.”

One of the projects added in conference authorized $1.8 billion for flood control along the Santa Ana River, as requested by Boxer. DeMint criticized it for totaling 10 percent of the original bill.

While that debate was going on, the advocacy group Taxpayers for Common Sense found a surprise in the text of the new law that will keep some of the most sought-after Senate earmark information out of public view until just before bills hit the floor.

The law excuses Senate committees from publishing online at an early stage of the process earmark lists that include the names of sponsors, the recipients and the purposes of projects.

Instead, at the committee approval stage, the only data required to go online are certifications that members have no financial interests in their own earmarks.

It was a minor change in wording that made a big difference between the version that became law and the version the Senate passed in January. The earlier version would have required committees to publish all earmark information online immediately.

As it stands, complete earmark information will not have to be put online until 48 hours before bills reach the floor.

“In January, the Senate voted unanimously to provide this information. By July, a star-chamber conference committee left the veneer of transparency but gutted the substance,” complained Ellis.

Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman, insisted that the change was minor.

“In the course of finalizing the ethics law, we refined various provisions to make them rational, workable and cohesive,” Manley said. “The final version provides ample public disclosure of earmarks in a workable fashion.”