MANY STATE legislatures suffer from comparisons to fraternity houses, where (mostly) male lawmakers, often on months-long leaves from their families and regular jobs, do the taxpayers' business in settings where some decide that the normal rules don't apply. The profusion of free liquor and fawning lobbyists, combined with a sense of entitlement and privilege, sometimes add up to ignominious conduct — grist for the scandal mill of many a statehouse reporter.

As incidents of sexual harassment and assault continue to engulf the rich and famous from coast to coast, state legislators have been the subjects of a drumbeat of allegations. A survey last month by the USA Today Network found that at least 40 of them, nearly all men, had been accused of some form of sexual misconduct in the course of the past year. On Wednesday night, Dan Johnson, a Republican state lawmaker in Kentucky, died in an apparent suicide after having been accused of assaulting a teenage girl. Four other GOP lawmakers in Kentucky have been implicated in a recent sexual-harassment scandal; one of them, Jeff Hoover, resigned his position as the state's House speaker.

Mindful of the furor, Maryland's two top legislative leaders have ordered legislative officials to begin systematically keeping track of sexual-misconduct complaints and producing an annual report on the number, nature and resolution of allegations. That's a welcome initiative with one glaring shortcoming: The data that will be compiled and, presumably, available to the public will exclude the names of alleged perpetrators, including any members of the General Assembly, as well as legislative staffers.

As a personnel matter, it may be that House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) believed their hands were tied. As a practical matter, collecting information on the alleged transgressions of lawmakers who remain anonymous is likely to have little real-world effect. For better or worse, the most potent disincentive for would-be harassers and abusers is not discreet inquiries from human resources personnel but the threat of public disgrace.

Under Maryland's new system, reports of sexual harassment may be referred to ethics officials, who might recommend that lawmakers be publicly censured or even expelled from office. Then again, they might not be if deemed insufficiently serious. And shouldn't it be up to voters, not legislative insiders or officials, to decide the fate of the people they hire in elections — namely, lawmakers?

To its credit, the Maryland legislature does welcome reports of misconduct from witnesses as well as victims, a change made in the wake of accusations against Donald Trump during the presidential campaign last year. Its policy does seem to go beyond that in Virginia, where, despite a recent assertion by House Republican Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox (Colonial Heights) describing his chamber's "zero tolerance" policy on sexual harassment and other abuse, no systematic, publicly available documentation of such incidents is in place.

Maryland's Mr. Miller was correct when he described the current national revelations as "a watershed moment." But if that's what it is, how is anonymity an adequate response?