the taxing powers they now have. It was
felt important that this sentence be in-
cluded to permit Baltimore City and the
23 counties to exercise the powers they now
have without any fear that the constitu-
tion which we are working on here, it'
adopted by the people, will act in diminu-
tion of those powers.
Section 8.02 on page 2, assessments,
reads as follows. "Assessments with respect
to any tax shall be made pursuant to uni-
form rules and pursuant to such classifica-
tion of properties, taxpayers and events as
may be determined by law, which classes
shall include property devoted to agricul-
tural use as prescribed by law."
This section is divisible in two parts for
our consideration here tonight, and I should
like to reason with you on each of them.
The first deals with the rule of uni-
formity, a rule which many people in this
State including Delegate Henderson, the
President of the Convention, Delegate Sher-
bow, and the present speaker fought for
for many years.
It will provide that assessments shall be
made pursuant to uniform rules. First, you
must notice the word "shall", because this
section mandates a rule of uniformity. This
is a proposition that has been fought for,
as I have said earlier, for the last 30 years
at least, and to my own certain knowledge,
for the last 20.
The fight first began in the commission
headed by a very distinguished member of
the Baltimore City Bar, Mr. William Lee
Rawls, continued through the Commission
headed by Honorable Joseph Sherbow, fi-
nally the Tax Survey Commission in 1949
which I chaired and of which the President
of the Convention was a member, all at-
tempting to reach this result, with varying
degrees of success.
The section deals with any tax. I empha-
size the word "any" because the present
declaration of rights speaks in terms of
property taxes, but the rule of uniformity
should apply of course, to all taxes, both
excise and direct taxes, and this section
attempts to do that with the words "any
tax."
It speaks in terms of uniform rules,
because it was recognized of course that
absolute uniformity in the property tax
field is a point which is desirable but which
is in the last analysis completely unat-
tainable.
The section also requires that there shall
be classification and where you have in the
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tax field proper classification it will follow
generally speaking that uniformity of as-
sessments will be obtained.
So much for the first part.
The second part has an interesting his-
tory which I will attempt to trace very
briefly. You will notice at the beginning of
line 6, the section says which classes shall
include property devoted to agricultural
use as prescribed by law.
This is the so-called farm land preferen-
tial tax assessment which has been much
debated in these halls and in others for
many years.
The history is simply this. In 1955 the
General Assembly passed at the suggestion
of the delegate from Montgomery County
who is now state senator from that county,
a bill which would permit the State Tax
Commission to classify farm lands in a
different manner than other real estate.
That law was vetoed by Governor Mc-
Keldin and at the next session in 1956 the
General Assembly passed the law over the
governor's veto. Subsequently in a case
called Gale v. State Tax Commission, the
Court of Appeals of Maryland ruled that
the law was unconstitutional because the
declaration of rights at that time did not
permit the separate classification of land.
The court held that all land had to be
similarly classified, and that an attempt on
the part of the General Assembly to clas-
sify land was therefore invalid. Thereafter
in 1959 a constitutional amendment was
put into our present Constitution or ac-
tually two amendments, which would make
it abundantly clear that property devoted
to agricultural use would be assessed for
such use and for no other use.
The methods by which the sponsors of
this amendment went about it were two-
fold; first, they amended Article 15 of the
Declaration of Rights to permit the sepa-
rate classification of land.
Secondly, in Article 43 of the Declara-
tion of Rights they put a specific provision
in the Constitution which said any land ac-
tively devoted to farm or agricultural use
would have to be assessed as such, and not
for some other use.
This amendment was put before the
people in 1960 and by a vote of over 3 to 1
the amendment carried, or the amendments
carried. At that time it was sponsored by
the Grange and all other agricultural as-
sociations and entities, had the backing of
most of the press, and most of the people
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