The House floor session started late. That happens when a meeting in the Speaker’s Office lasts longer than expected.

I noticed that the Minority Leader and Minority Whip were not on the floor.

After the session began, the former rose to offer rules changes to make committee hearings and votes available on the Internet and to require that all committee voting sessions be open to the public.

(The whip confirmed my suspicion. The Republican leaders had a pre-session meeting on the rules with the Speaker that ran late.)

Paid lobbyists and activists are well aware of the actions we take in Annapolis. The average citizen can’t Google them.

So we should make changes to address the public perception that we make decisions behind closed doors and try to hide them from the public.

If you cast a vote, you should be able to defend it – in the press and back home.

A cautionary note: These reforms “will allow our state government to make the best possible decisions,” one of my Democratic colleagues has written.

Procedural changes won’t affect the fundamentals of the legislative process. Greater transparency is an admirable objective, but it won’t transform the House of Delegates into the world’s greatest deliberative body.