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.

This problem “can be eliminated,” declared the witness.

“No it can’t,” I said to myself and soon thereafter to my chairman.

We legislate for the SOBs of the world, I often tell people. We make their actions illegal and impose fines, limit their future behavior, or put them in jail.

These penalties are designed to reduce the problem caused by their acts. But they won’t rid society of this bad behavior.

Advocates are advocates. They urge us to adopt severe penalties and make no concessions to another viewpoint. That is their role.

But they also need to recognize that human beings aren’t perfect and neither is the legislative process. We seek compromise among 141 different members, with the goal of reducing – but not eliminating, the problems before us.

You can oppose funding for a program but still take credit for it – if you’re in the minority.

Our budget is too dependent upon federal stimulus dollars, according to Republican legislative leaders.

Maryland will receive $1.1 billion for K-12 education and $1.6 billion for Medicaid in Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010. Without that money, severe cuts would have to be made.

We must make the public aware of the effect on their kids’ education and health care if we actually did what the GOP wants, I told my colleagues.

You can’t have your stimulus and berate it too.

John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, father of Rose Kennedy and grandfather of Edward M. Kennedy, was twice elected Mayor of Boston.

He began his political career voting the cemetery.

Turnout – among the living, will be crucial tomorrow in the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat and to retain a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate.

And you don’t have to be in Massachusetts to help get out the vote. I’ve received several emails informing me of phone banks in Maryland.

Here’s a post-Election Night scenario you haven’t heard:

The outcome of the election is disputed and winds up in court. That will take months to resolve.

In the meantime, Paul Kirk, a Democrat, remains the junior Senator from Massachusetts, and the health care bill passes.

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I introduced my first bill today.

It would modify the writ of innocence law that I passed last year by requiring that notice be given to the prosecutor and the crime victim before a hearing is held on the convicted’s claim of innocence.

The State’s Attorneys asked the Governor to veto the bill. We agreed to seek these changes instead.

People like to be asked and people like to be thanked.

They also like it when you show up.

The Women Legislators of Maryland Foundation held “The Reunion of the Sisterhood! 2010” last night.

Unlike all other Annapolis receptions at the dinner hour, you had to purchase a ticket. However, there were no competing affairs.

The chair of the group outlined the top four issues for the session, Governor O’Malley spoke, and nearly 30 women electeds stood at the microphone to give their name and legislative district.

Then the chair asked the male legislators to stand up.

Speaker Busch and I were the only two.

Pretty amazing, I thought to myself. Not that I was there but that no one else was.

(Already a dividend: “Always good to see some male legislators there!” a lobbyist wrote me today. She wants to include an amendment of mine in a bill she’s drafting.)

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I may become a member of a second caucus of two.

Another Orioles Fantasy Camper is running for the House of Delegates, I just learned.

We’re both catchers. However, only one of us is a Democrat.

So he’ll get no free publicity (or batting practice fastball to hit) in this diary.

There is no spring training before the regular session/season in Annapolis.

This afternoon, we were fifteen minutes into the discussion of a bill I’ll be introducing before the thought hit me. As drafted, this bill would not be heard by my committee.

There’s certainly no guarantee that it will pass if it’s considered by the Judiciary Committee, but at least I’ll be in the room – for the public hearing, the voting session, and the pre-meeting meetings with the Chairman, legal staff, and committee leadership.

It’s a point I’ve made many times over the years in this diary, but it had slipped my mind today. You want to be in the room when your bill is discussed and voted on.

The corollary: when possible, have legislation drafted to amend a section of the Maryland code which falls within the jurisdiction of your committee.

“Research which committee heard other bills on this topic and what section of the code they were drafted to,” I asked one of the people at the meeting.

With that information in hand, we’ll revise the bill.

Same words, different pew. We hope.

My first day in Annapolis began with the gotcha quote of the day.

Senator Harry Reid’s remark about then Senator Barack Obamna’s skin color and dialect – or lack thereof, prompted an endless and mindless discussion on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.

Of course, there was the canard that the liberal press had a double standard: “When Trent Lott said the country would have been better off had Strom Thurmond been elected President, the mainstream media called for his head.”

A first-year law student knows how to point out the critical differences between one set of facts and another. Acknowledging voters’ prejudices is far different than regretting that a segregationist was not elected President.

My day ended with a sober discussion of the fiscal problems faced by the state and Baltimore City.

In Annapolis, we’re not distracted by sideshows. We address the tough issues, balance the budget, and preserve the state’s AAA bond rating.

All during the next 90 days.

You don’t get your bills passed if you wait until January to start working on them. If your bills are enacted, you have to keep working to make sure they’re implemented.

So ninety days into our nine-month interim, I write to discuss with you some of the issues I’m working on.

The Congress has passed two laws that create opportunities for similar action at the state level.

The sale and distribution of tobacco products will be regulated by the federal government under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. This law gives the states clear authority to regulate in this area as well. My focus will be on sales to minors and advertising directed at these potential smokers.

It will be easier for young people saddled with academic debt to enter public service under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, whose chief sponsor was Congressman John P. Sarbanes. If you work for the government or a non-profit for ten years, what you still owe on your federal student loans will be forgiven.

I sponsored the laws which created similar incentives with state funds. I will be meeting with financial aid experts to see if we should modify our programs in light of this major federal initiative.

As vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, criminal law is one of my responsibilities. The rash of violence perpetrated by gangs and the senseless shooting of a five-year old bystander by a teenager with a long history of offenses demand a thorough review of our existing policy. I have begun that process.

Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy about the cell phone calls you make when you’re traveling from one place to another? Should the police be required to get a judge’s approval for a search warrant before they obtain the records of the locations where you made such calls? I think they should and will introduce a bill to require that they do so.

My green jobs bill was enacted this past session, making it a priority to train current and former welfare clients for jobs in this growing sector of the economy. I just learned that this will be a key aspect of the state’s job training efforts.

My Lilly Ledbetter bill reversed a Supreme Court decision that made it very difficult for workers to recover damages from employers who had discriminated against them because of their gender.

Justice Ruth Ginsburg wrote the dissent in this case. I had the honor of presenting her a copy of our legislation, signed by Governor O’Malley.

This was not the first time I met the Justice. She was one of my law school professors. Her class was “Sex Discrimination and the Law.”

I may get a second chance to give the Justice a bill that reverses a decision she dissented from. Last month, the Supreme Court made it very difficult for workers to win a case if they had been treated unfairly because of their age.

I welcome your thoughts about these issues or other matters of concern to you.

Jim McKay died last June on the day that the Belmont Stakes was run.

Not long after that (I don’t remember exactly when), I thought of renaming the Maryland Million in his memory.

Earlier today, after the Rules Committee took favorable action on my resolution to accomplish that, I said to myself, “It’s finally coming to the floor.”

There was a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

Newly offered amendments won’t jeopardize my bill to allow wrongly convicted prisoners to present newly discovered evidence.

At this late hour, prosecutors are proposing changes to my bill creating a writ of innocence. They would be offered in a conference committee, except the conferees won’t be meeting.

The Senate crossfile of this legislation has already passed. That bill can be signed by the Governor.

I’m not going to accept weakening amendments to my bill so that it too can be reviewed and then signed by the Governor.

If both bills were to pass the legislature, the prosecutors would lobby the Governor to sign only the one with my name and their amendments.

So my chairman has agreed not to have the House conferees meet.

You can get a lot done, the old saying goes, if you don’t have to get all the credit for doing so.