Did you hear the story about the rabbi and the swami?

Actually it wasn’t a rabbi, as the story was first told, but a celibate swami who asked for help in keeping his distance from the women in the Senate chamber last week. 

The two chambers of the General Assembly handle their opening prayers differently, but both tread lightly and work creatively as they look to balance the spirituality of their members, the diversity of the population and the separation of church and state.

Open government advocates are pushing for more General Assembly transparency, in the wake of this week's decision to put legislative committee votes online.

The Maryland Open Government Act, a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by more than half the delegates and senators, goes much further.

The bill would change the way committees schedule hearings and place their proceedings online. Our report includes video coverage from Thursday.

Maryland State Lottery revenues have continued to grow despite major cutbacks to the agency's advertising budget, but officials warned lawmakers Tuesday that the good times won't last.

Gina Smith, the interim lottery director, said at a Senate budget hearing that she has seen a decline in lottery sales in recent weeks, a phenomenon she says is tied to this year's $8 million drop in marketing cash.

“We’ve now reached the point where we’re running out of money and our spending is going to be much less throughout the rest of the fiscal year,” Smith said.

Maryland government agencies will have to reconcile more than $50 million that was misplaced, forgotten or unaccounted for in fiscal 2009, according to an audit released this week.

The Office of Legislative Audits looked at the closeout of the fiscal year, and found that several agencies miscalculated their assets or debts at the end of last June.

The explanations range from federal cash that never got claimed to money that was counted twice. Officials said the damage would likely be spread around the responsible state agencies, or rolled over to next year.

You may soon find General Assembly committee votes online and maybe even watch or listen to Webcasts of these crucial voting sessions, which decide life or death for every bill.

The push for relatively inexpensive good government measures is especially attractive this year when there is no money to spend on new programs. 

But the move to greater openness and accountability in Annapolis is not without its partisan bumps.

Maryland would forgo millions of dollars in tax revenue if it joined a 23-state compact aimed at collecting sales tax from “remote sellers” like Amazon.com, according to a report issued to lawmakers.

The report from Comptroller Peter Franchot’s office said the state would be short by up to $66.3 million next year if it adopted a “streamlined sales tax" standard.

Maryland has been waiting on federal action before it changes the way it collects the sales tax, largely because states can’t uniformly charge tax on Internet and mail-order transactions without a broad legal authorization by Congress.

Maryland’s two-month tax amnesty program that ran last year has been nearly three times as effective as was previously expected, tax officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

Deputy Comptroller Linda Tanton said during a briefing for the House Ways and Means Committee that the amnesty has raised about $26 million, and is still bringing in money as taxpayers continue to pay off their old debts. She estimated that the state would haul in another $5 million.