Economic Development to combine and expand functions now being
performed by two separate agencies.

His plan would merge the present Department of Information with
the new department, which would be headed by a director and gov-
erned by a seven-member committee.

The bill he is having prepared will follow closely recommendations
made by a subcommittee of the Legislative Council appointed this year
to study the problem of economic and industrial development.

Mr. Tawes said he endorsed the subcommittee report "in prin-
ciple, " adding that there are some details which require further study
before the bill can be drafted in its final form.

Maryland being only one of three states without an official agency
for economic development, Mr. Tawes made this a major plank in his
platform in the campaign in which he was elected Governor.

In one speech during that campaign, he said:

"When we know that other states are burning the midnight oil
thinking up new ways to attract industry, it ill becomes us Marylanders
to sit back complacently and rest on past laurels and half-hearted,
unco-ordinated promotion schemes. "

Such activity as exists in that field now is being performed by the
understaffed State Planning Commission.

A recent study of the State Planning Commission, made by V. O.
Key, Jr., a professor of government at Harvard University, recommended
that this function be removed from the commission.

That report states that "the function of industrial promotion has
no place in the duties of the State Planning Commission. "

"Promotional endeavor, " it said, "is incompatible with sustained
attention to the types and problems (of planning). "

The Legislative Council subcommittee, headed by Delegate Ernest
A. Loveless, Jr., (D., Prince George's), urged that legislation to set
up the new department "be considered at the 1959 session of the
Maryland Legislature. "

It said that if Maryland is to meet successfully competition for in-
dustrial plants from other states, "there should be as little delay as
possible in providing such a commission for Maryland. "

The department would be administered by a full-time director, an
expert in the field. Its governing body would be a seven-member
commission, with membership distributed on a geographical basis.

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