The word went out on Tuesday afternoon — appropriately enough, Valentine's Day — that two House of Delegates committees charged with considering legislation authorizing same-sex marriage would hold a vote at 4:30 p.m. to decide whether the matter would be sent to the full chamber. If you happen to follow The Sun's Annie Linskey on Twitter (@annielinskey), you would have learned about this at 2:54 p.m. Devotees of The Washington Post's John Wagner (@wpjohnwagner) would have heard four minutes later. Within half an hour, it was on both newspapers' websites.

Interested in the issue but don't happen to be in Annapolis? No problem. The House of Delegates this year began live streaming video of its committee hearings, and the Senate began streaming audio. It was part of an effort by the presiding officers of both chambers to make the workings of government more transparent.

But if you had gone to the legislature's website at 4:30 that afternoon, you would have found nothing. No video, no audio, and not even a notice anywhere that a voting session was going on. There is still no record online of what happened in that meeting other than the result: a 25-18 vote, with one abstention, in favor of sending the bill to the floor.

For years, the General Assembly has provided live and archived audio of the proceedings on the floor of both chambers. That allows anyone who is interested to hear what our elected representatives have to say during floor debates. But of the thousands of bills that are filed each year in Annapolis, hundreds never make it to the floor, and many that do have been amended in key ways that may never be discussed in the full House or Senate. It is in the committees where much of the real work of hashing out legislation is done, and it is unquestionably an advance that the legislature is making that part of the process more accessible. Committee vote tallies are now also posted on-line before bills are debated in the full House or Senate.

But there is no reason, technical or otherwise, to broadcast the hearings on bills but not the sessions in which members of the committees vote on them and consider amendments. In the case of the gay marriage bill, that means members of the public could watch the hours of testimony from proponents and opponents of the legislation, which would be a great help to anyone trying to make up his or her mind about the issue. But leaving out the session in which delegates debated amendments — including ones that would have delayed the effective date of the bill or changed it to authorize civil unions instead of same-sex marriage — and voted on the legislation itself prevents members of the public from making up their minds about the people they sent to Annapolis to represent them.

Committee voting sessions are open to the public, but they have too often been held in such a way as to minimize the chance that the public will actually pay attention. They are scheduled at the discretion of the committee chairman and are often not well advertised. They are not posted on the General Assembly's website, and there is no service to which you can subscribe to find out when they will be held.

Both chambers of the legislature passed a bill last year requiring the creation of a joint committee to study transparency issues, and it was impaneled last fall. But it met only once before the General Assembly session started and has taken no action so far. Lifting the veil on committee votes should be one of its first orders of business.

This issue may not seem important to lawmakers who are working to round up the votes to pass (or defeat) same sex marriage, considering a raft of tax increase proposals from the governor or getting lobbied on a thousand other issues. But for voters, transparency isn't trivial. It is fundamental to the legitimacy of our system of government, and it should not be treated as an afterthought.

Correction: An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly described the status of efforts to post committee votes online. The Sun regrets the error.